Student protests in the age of austerity. The “Primavera Valenciana” case.

Abstract

On February 2012, in the city of Valencia (Spain), high school students took the street and blocked the car traffic. They protested against recent economic cuts undertaken by the regional government in the education field. Surprisingly, this spontaneous initiative transformed itself into a generalised social movement against the education policy of the Valencian Partido Popular. This movement was called “Primavera Valenciana” (“Valencian Spring”). The aim of this paper is to analyse the relationship between localised resistance in the Valencian education field (both at high school and university levels) and the development of a social movement with high visibility and impact on the public sphere. In order to make sense of this process we will consider the austerity policies implemented by political authorities in education, which in the Valencian case these measures were intense and shocking. Also, we analyse the students made use of social media (blogs, Facebook, Twitter) to disseminate texts, images and ideas in contrast to the treatment of the traditional mass media.