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Can present day grassroots direct actions be considered revolutionary? In this paper, I argue that seemingly 'reformist' demands can be considered revolutionary in today's neoliberal capitalism. At the turn of the twenty-first century, working class Ecuadorian migrants in Barcelona were trying to join the global middle classes via subprime mortgage loans and despite their precarious jobs. Following the collapse of Spain's housing bubble, unemployed, defaulting on their mortgages, and risking home eviction, they turned to housing activism. They joined the Platform for People Affected by Mortgages (PAH) and became daily protestors for the right to housing and against indebtedness. Looking at PAH approaches that encouraged debt default among low-income families, strategies to reconvert repossessed homes by rescued banks into social housing units, or the effective occupation of buildings that belonged to these banks by the PAH to house evicted families, I claim that these moments represent revolutionary instances of a broader fight against indebtedness taking place globally which can be considered-as many did at the PAH-a fight against capitalism at large. In this paper I illustrate how people who had seldom participated in social mobilization became part of a small Barcelonan movement for the right to housing that grew exponentially throughout Spain succeeding in canceling thousands of mortgage debts and stopping equally as many evictions. PAH's spaces of encounter and action made possible a cross-class alliance upheld by weekly assemblies and near daily direct actions against financial institutions and a pro-austerity central government. These moments demonstrate the ability of everyday people to reclaim housing, redefine the narrative of indebtedness, and-in the case of Barcelona-it even made possible taking control of City Hall. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analysed the aftermath of the bursting of the housing bubble in Spain, which has left thousands of families without homes and indebted for life. In the first of two parts, we look at contextually specific interactions between state regulation and market-oriented projects in Spain. This country is a salient case in which an economic recession and a debt crisis follow upon a long period of growth characterized by a housing bubble and a particular urban growth model. In this part, we argue that the central government has played a key role in framing fiscal incentives for housing ownership, and local and regional administrations have engaged in short-term forms of inter-spatial competition for public and private resources, place marketing and regulatory under-cutting in order to attract investment. In the second part, the paper examined the urban social movement 'Platform of Mortgage Victims' that, after starting in Barcelona, has spread to many other cities. The movement has created innovative strategies for housing accessibility and public and private governance in the housing market. These strategies include innovations at the local level and at national and European institutional levels. In this part, we argue that social movements like the one we study are socially innovative when they aim at responding to social needs not met by the market and the state institutions. At the same time with their activism, they transform the debate in the public sphere while prompting institutions to introduce new governance mechanisms and policy outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]