https://doi.org/10.1177/0309816818815242 Capital & Class 1–23 © The Author(s) 2018 Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions DOI: 10.1177/0309816818815242 journals.sagepub.com/home/cnc Trade unions as retaining walls against political change: A Gramscian approach to remunicipalisation policies in a Spanish City Beltran Roca Universidad de Cádiz, Spain Jon Las Heras University of the Basque Country, Spain Abstract The 2008 economic and political crisis produced a favourable opportunity structure for the emergence of new and innovative left-wing political projects and trade union strategies in Spain, especially in relation to remunicipalisation processes that sought to revert the neoliberal policy making at the local scale. The article deploys a Gramscian analysis on trade union discourse production in order to discern complex process of working-class formation and intra-class conflict in the beach cleaning units of the Andalusian city of Cádiz. Crucially, the oppositional stand defended by one of the largest trade unions in Spain towards remunicipalisation shows that trade unions can act as ‘retaining walls’ against political change in periods of social upheaval. Keywords Antonio Gramsci, methodology of the subaltern, remunicipalisation, Spain, trade unions, working-class fractions Corresponding author: Jon Las Heras, School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester, Arthur Lewis Building, Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL, UK. Email: jonlasheras@linuxmail.org 815242CNC 0 0 10.1177/0309816818815242Capital & ClassRoca and Las Heras research-article 2018 Article