Zur symbolischen Rückeroberung und Politisierung des öffentlichen Raums
The radical conquest of public space and its transformation into political spacehave introduced major alterations of the Spanish public sphere after the outbreak of the 15-Mmovement. Such modifications refer also to a topic of symbolical interest, which is the conceptionand configuration of urban space – a space that in the course of neoliberal urbanproduction has been characterized as a residual category and a place of controlled and profitorientedactivities. By analysing key practices of the protest movement, the article brings togetherdebates from critical urban geography and political theory. In a first step, it develops aconceptual perspective towards the multiple logics of neoliberal urbanism and the transformationof public space. Subsequently, counter-hegemonic spatial politics and urban demandswill be discussed through the conceptualization of protest as acts of citizenship, proclaimingthe construction of the public sphere and public space via strategic disobedience and thetransgression of rules and laws. Protest camps, public political assemblies and recent squattingcan be analysed as newly created spaces of citizenship that reconstruct the meaning of publicspace and of a political and politicised public sphere, claiming different ways of policy making.