The Liberal Community as a Concept in Crisis: Contradictions and Opportunities of Community Interventions in Spain

In the wake of COVID-19, a new interest in the stability of local communities has emerged in many places around the world. Looking at the situation in Spain, the pandemic has been a tipping-point in the productive and accumulative capacity of Spanish capitalism, which has been dependent on German capital flows even since before the 2008 recession (Charnock et al. 2014: 125), having severe financial implications on the country’s social structure. The austerity model imposed by the European Union and European Central Bank suggested sharp budgetary cuts – especially for the health system – and has left a precarious welfare state (Rey-Araújo 2020: 211). Under these difficult circumstances, local communities have been a harbour for thousands of people and families that have lost their jobs, houses, or their health.The concept of community is also crucial in Raymond Williams' work, and we argue that his differentiation made in Keywords between (mainly administrative) local politics and (more committed and authentic) community politics provides valuable cues for developing elements of a critical social community work theory, based on what Williams referred to as the idea of “‘working directly with people’” rather than merely providing a “voluntary work supplementary to official provision or paid service” (1976: 66). This idea of service was associated by Williams with the questionable middle-class conceptualization of community as opposed to his preferred idea of community as solidarity, which he connected with the working class (2017: 430).