In the years following the Great Recession of 2008 and Spain's 15M plaza occupations in 2011, protesters in Spain engaged in increasingly agitational and illegal forms of dissent, challenging the legitimacy of the government itself while working to build popular support among the millions impacted by ongoing economic and political crises. This article draws on ethnographic research conducted in Barcelona and Sevilla, Spain, during 2012 and 2013 to analyze a range of campaigns in which protesters, influenced by local histories of anarchism and autonomous squatting, engaged in coordinated theft and property occupations as modes of direct action or “social banditry” to protest continuing economic crisis, government corruption, and police impunity. I examine some of the efforts of the police, the Spanish state, and mainstream Spanish media to marginalize protesters who engaged in illegal activities, and ways protesters fought to present counternarratives to justify their actions. In the examples I describe,...

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