Proposals for voting strategies proliferated in the runup to Sunday’s general election in Spain. People wrote “ballot box” on drains and toilets; others suggested cutting out the middlemen and depositing votes directly into bank machines. This campaign of ballot spoiling wasn’t a subcultural anarchist prank, but a reflection of extraordinarily widespread popular disaffection. A typical sight during a pre-election protest was a respectable middle-aged man with a cigarette in one hand and a marker pen in the other going from municipal bin to municipal bin writing “Vote here” on the lids.”They don’t represent us” and “They are all the same” – the slogans of the indignados (the Spanish progenitors of the Occupy movement, who have mobilised hundreds of thousands across the country) – are now mainstream.

In contrast to the political parties, the indignados (the “outraged”) say: “They want your vote; we want your opinion.” They question the very legitimacy of electoral politics, seeing a hollowing out of representative democracy that the eurozone crisis is rendering critical. In their words, “the polls are in the safe custody of the European Central Bank”.

On election day the indignados got protest-voting trending on Twitter with a three-pronged strategy: to abstain, spoil one’s ballot, or attempt to break out of the bipartisan system by voting for a minority party. Rather than just staying at home, people actively registered disgust at the choices on offer, and the number of spoiled ballots on Sunday was double that of the last election in 2008 – numbering, with abstentions and blank votes, 11 million: more than voted for the rightwing victors, the Partido Popular.

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