The occupation of city squares across Spain has shown the oppressed in Europe there is a way forward in our struggle for representation of our views. Fear dissappears when the need becomes greatest, and that is when a nation of traditionally fearful people like the Spanish, still recovering from a violent dictatorship 35 years ago, rise up together and take concerted action.

United against the apathy of the centre and the fascism of the right-wing, this move to enforce an anarcho-libertarian model for deciding matters of importance could be the beginning of something big across Europe. It showed that when there is no money in a nation, power is transferred to those who have the most representative ideas for the future. When capitalism fails to provide a hope and a future, when people's homes are snatched by the greedy banks, when the government withdraws the few financial aids it has provided in order to pay back the same banks and when disenchantment with politics grows to become intolerable, the bubble inevitably bursts.

This bubble is the one that is still holding the people inert in Britain, because they are too conformed to the current system which has for so many hundreds of years given wealth to this country. They have hope that things will get better, because they always have. That pride in their institutions keeps them from doing anything but moan among themselves while the whole welfare system is sold out to the highest bidder. The last thing to go will be the jobseekers allowance, the main procurer of comfort for the otherwise poverty-stricken working class. Desperation may flow then but it will probably be too late.

In Spain the questioning has already started. A fully-fledged globalised capitalist system that placed the country's economy at a delusive fourth place in the EU just five years ago now seems a long way away. As unemployment edges towards half the population and those years of abundant credit now seem long gone, the yolk of debt is choking the life out of their hearts and they must break free. The mobilisation of thousands of people to the main squares of both Barcelona and Madrid is a sign that the Spanish feel they should be given a chance to contemplate a different future. The indignation and repulsion felt when the police violently assaulted the protestors shamelessly shows they no longer see things as black and white as in Britain. The continuation and expansion of the assemblies across the neighbourhoods of the two Iberian metropoles, indicates that deference is dead.

Now the challenge has been laid: Will we respond to the desperation and react to bring about a Russian Revolution or will we continue to trust the patriarchs as they lead us to a new feudal state where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer? I don't know if anyone noted last week that Marks and Spencer, an upper middle class institution, registered record profits of over £700 million in UK. This is a crisis for the poor and just an opportunity for the rich to balance the books by enslaving us even further. Capitalism is unsustainable unless we are too concerned with surviving to fight it.

When the British population hedged their bets in their traditions they forgot their realities. Last week I saw it with my own eyes. At another poorly attended UK Uncut demo, five burly drunks approached us and started arguing with the organisers. They were informed we were fighting for them but these football fans were hardened in their pride and said: “If you don't like it you can leave the country!” I just hope the rest of Britain will not shy from our problems in this way. If we do not fight now when we have a foot to stand on, change is going to be all the more painful when we are on our knees.