“ We Are Not Freeing Palestine, Palestine Is Freeing Us ”: Intellectuals and the Anti-Colonial Framing of the Palestinian Solidarity Movement

Abstract

This article examines the role of political, cultural, and institutional intellectuals in the discursive radicalization of the current wave of solidarity with Palestine in Spain. Drawing on Gramscian and decolonial traditions, we reconsider who becomes legible and constructed as an intellectual in the context of sustained transnational mobilization for Palestine. Based on empirical data from Spain, we argue that the perceived discursive radicalization of Palestinian Solidarity Movement is driven by the growing prominence of an anti-colonial frame. Using original in-depth interviews with activists and key informants and desktop research, we identify four types of intellectual figures within the movement and analyse how each contributes to this discursive shift. Beyond deepening solidarity, their influence has turned the Palestinian cause into a powerful prism of politicization: one through which activists rediscover the persistence of the modern colonial order, recognize the coloniality of their own regimes, and connect broader patterns of inequality and injustice.