The municipalism assault and its participatory challenges

This article analyses the participatory institutionality promoted by the rise of municipalism governments in Spain from 2015 to 2019. It focuses on the institutional advances made by this new wave of participation, as well as on the most important limits. In terms of the most important advances, it highlights the generation of a new administrative participatory structure reflected both in the municipal organisation structure, the budget and the transversality achieved through the integration of other municipal services into the participatory processes. In terms of limits, the inherited strategic selectivity as a brake on change, the reduced transformative capacity of the new participatory institutionality, the difficulty of integrating traditional absences and the problem of time as a factor that prevents greater institutionalisation, sustainability and embedding of participatory processes. In order to reach these conclusions, an in-depth study of three municipal governments (Zaragoza, Valladolid and A Coruña) was carried out using a methodological triangulation that included documentary analysis, interviews with key actors and participant observation.