Juan Manuel Sánchez Gordillo

For some, the answer to the economic crisis is austerity. For others it is credit, or job creation. For the mayor of the Andalusian town of Marinaleda, direct action is the most apt response. In the summer, Sánchez Gordillo and fellow members of the SAT labour union grabbed the headlines by organising “food grabs” in two supermarkets. Activists carted food out of the shops without paying, insisting it would be donated to local charities. Sánchez Gordillo saw this as a symbolic move to illustrate the extent of Spain’s troubles and he also led a series of protest marches and squats on unused land across the south. In Marinaleda itself, the bearded, charismatic mayor claims to have established a socialist “utopia”, where cooperation, solidarity and relatively low unemployment buck the trend in one of the regions that has been hardest hit by the recession. “Banks are being rescued with public money,” Gordillo told Iberosphere. “But it’s people that need to be rescued.”