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Paper short abstract

This paper examines the emotional assemblages that activists experience in face of state repression in Spain. It argues that how activists frame and live these emotions in their specific social context can lead both to the strengthening of their political activity or to their disengagement.

Paper long abstract

The impacts of state repression on political activists have been widely studied, including its emotional effects on individual activists (Starr et al, 2008; Stephens, 2020; Jämte and Ellefsen, 2020). However, in the case of Spain, there is scarce research on this issue, which has mainly focused on repression’s chilling effects (Bondía, 2015), the role of fear (Camps y Vergès, 2015) and the emergence of paranoia and distrust between activists (Gunzelmann, 2022).

This paper aims to move beyond the established findings on this field and delve into the complex emotional assemblages that arise when activists face repression, in order to map these emotional assemblages, identify which factors intervene in the development of an emotional assemblage or another, and understand how these emotional assemblages participate in activists’ decisions to continue their political activity or disengage from it. This analysis is part of a wider study on repression of social movements in Spain, which includes an ethnography consisting on 25 interviews with activists as well as participant observation in social movements organising, both developed throughout 2025.

Through this fieldwork, it has been possible to identify how repression generates feelings of fear, shame, collectivity or a sense of meaning. These emotions are shaped not only by repression itself but in dialogue with activists’ own political stances, the availability of a supportive community or their ability to frame their activity outside the state’s own narratives. It is greatly in this collective and affective work where the continuity of their political engagement is decided.