Flash Mobs Battle Spanish Banks to Halt Foreclosures

(Bloomberg) Luis Dominguez got up at dawn to take a 5 a.m. bus to join a human chain around a Madrid home threatened with foreclosure. Three weeks earlier, the crowd had come to him after he telephoned for help.

“I was facing eviction and they saved me from losing my home,” said Dominguez, 74, a pensioner with a walking stick in one hand and a five-foot placard saying “Stop Evictions” in the other. “I came today to show my gratitude and support.”

The 300 protesters, organized by a group called La Plataforma de los Afectados por la Hipoteca, or PAH, managed to win a reprieve for the property’s owner, a single mother with a disabled son. Rising unemployment in Spain may lead to 300,000 foreclosures this year and next, according to Adicae, a rights group representing bank customers.

Spain has become a battleground between banks hurt by a five-fold increase in residential mortgage arrears since 2007 and debt-laden homeowners who are appealing to the government to reduce the burden on those facing foreclosure. .............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-07-13/dial-a-crowd-confronts-debt-laden-spanish-banks-by-thwarting-foreclosures.html

I'd noticed it this morning and thought, ¡aha! Bloomberg. So they're worried.

And, "Flash Mob": What an anglo-american english-speaking/thinking media-spin way of putting it, compared with the particulary Spanish flavor of the way of doing things around here.

What you're seeing, and are going to see much more of, is the process, folllowing the majorly indignant concentrated manifestations/demonstrations/assemblies of the late spring / early summer, of localisation and of diversification of this indignant spirit spreading out across Europe and beyond, we hope, to your America, rising from the South.


Edit: Nb. This "indignant spirit" has the support of 70% of people in Spain, already, polls say.