Foreign Correspondent: Aug 25

This week on Foreign Correspondent, Sally Sara meets the grass roots, social media-driven activists who are turning politics on its head in Spain.

She talks to recently elected Madrid councillor Pablo Soto and newly elected Barcelona councillor Gala Pin.

Now that they’ve got the power, what will they do with it?

Millions of people had lost their homes to the banks. Millions more were jobless. Disillusioned and desperate for change, they clogged Spain’s streets and squares in protests that ran for months. It came to be known as 15M, in a nod to the day it all began: 15 May 2011.

Now, four years on, through organisation, persistence and social media savvy, the 15M protesters have become the politicians in the country’s biggest cities.

Newcomers like Soto and Pin never imagined that the police they had confronted in the 15M protests would be awkwardly saluting them as they now make their daily entrances into town hall.

Their idealistic platform is total transparency and a pure democracy where policies are made from the bottom up. Citizens, not politicians, will decide where and how public money is spent.

A top priority is stopping the plague of foreclosures which left up to 3.5 million homes sitting vacant – and sent a bolt of anger through the country.

Foreign Correspondent follows the newbie politicians as they explore their offices and suddenly discover that they have stepped into a shark pool. Their opponents are hungrily trawling their social media histories for indiscretions.

On the very first day of Madrid’s new council one of Soto’s colleagues is forced to resign, and Soto himself is under pressure to quit.

Can Spain pull off this radical democracy experiment?

Tuesday, August 25 at 8pm on ABC.