Enric Duran sees a lot of problems with his country's financial system.
So the anti-capitalist activist, who is known as "Robin Hood" to some in Spain, took action to change the system. He borrowed more than half a million dollars from banks and gave the money to social projects. He never intended to repay any of the dozens of loans.
Duran began taking out personal and commercial loans in 2006 not only to make a statement about capitalism, but to fund campaigns with an eye for alternative economic systems.
"I saw that on one side, these social movements were building alternatives but that they lacked resources and communication capacities," Duran, who has been in hiding for 14 months, recently told The Guardian in a Skype call. "Meanwhile, our reliance on perpetual growth was creating a system that created money out of nothing."
Instead, Duran believes in a redesigned economy with a focus on social relationships based on mutual support.
So he sought to shepherd in a new system by taking out loans and funding social activists. In all, he took out 68 loans and credit cards at 39 different institutions before he was apprehended and arrested in 2009.
Now, staying in an undisclosed location, Duran has watched as the anti-capitalist movement in Spain has grown in response to the government's unpopular austerity measures. Last month, tens of thousands of demonstrators from across the country marched on Madrid to protest tax hikes and spending cutbacks.
Duran is not the only "Robin Hood" to crop up in Spain in recent years. In 2012, Reuters reported that a Spanish mayor organized supermarket raids and gave stolen groceries to families affected by the country's economic crisis.
Watch an interview with Duran, conducted in 2008 shortly after he took out the loans, below.
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