Committees of functional diversity in the Spanish 15M: putting the body in the public space

Abstract

This article aims to analyze some of the implications of the committees of functional diversity created in two Spanish cities during the 15M camps of 2011. Firstly, we situate them in the context of the historical evolution of disability activisms in Spain. Secondly, we describe the main traits of such committees within the 15M, based on their published materials on the Internet along with the assessments of some participants. Once contextualized, we analyze what we have considered the main contribution of the committees. It is the experience of "putting the body in the square", a form of embodied politics performed at the public space. This opened a debate on the logics of exclusion / inclusion within citizenship, and in turn it got back the awareness that precariousness and vulnerability are common traits of every human being. Therefore, we conclude that the committees of functional diversity represented a significant moment for both the disability activism and the 15M movement, with their use of the body as a liberatory tool to question the very definition of the human.