The Spanish State, as is the case throughout the West, is characterised by experiencing a moment of strong social tensions due to the dismantling of the welfare state. It must be borne in mind, however, that the Spanish State has its own particular features that strangle the democratic system, for it has an institutional architecture designed to preserve the status quo inherited from Francoism under an appearance of constitutional normality. The regime of ’78, as this system is popularly known, … Read more

In a few hours we begin the first strike in 14 years. This is no ordinary strike. It is the first major joint call in fourteen years to place housing at the centre of the political and social struggle. In recent decades housing has ceased to be a right and become a business. Rents above 1,500 euros a month have practically taken over the market, while the price of free-market housing reached 2,355 euros per square metre in the second … Read more

On 5 October 1988, the dictator Augusto Pinochet submitted his continuation in power to a plebiscite designed to legitimise his regime. The Chilean citizenry, after fifteen years without elections, responded with historic turnout and a result that opened the door to democracy. The military regime had made the 1980 Constitution its framework for institutionalisation. The twenty-seventh transitional provision established that, at the end of the presidential term, the Military Junta would propose a single candidate for a new eight-year mandate, … Read more

Between 1870 and 1914, the industrial powers of Europe multiplied their colonial possessions amid economic crisis and growing competition. Behind the civilising rhetoric, three material factors explain this process: the search for cheap raw materials, the need for markets for a production that exceeded domestic consumption, and the pressure to place capital in peripheral economies with higher returns. Modern imperialist expansion was neither a spontaneous nor an exclusively political phenomenon. The British economist J. A. Hobson published Imperialism: A Study … Read more