Conditional nostalgia, trauma and fear in the diaspora politics of first-generation Iranians in Spain

Iranians in the diaspora are involved in home country politics and develop their diaspora politics according to the political opportunity structures available in the host country. Iranians in Spain have been interested in the politics of their homeland since the 1980s and have responded to socio-political conflicts that are active or (re)activated in the country of origin. This paper focuses on the political mobilising of first-generation Iranians residing in Spain since the early 1980s and 1990s in connection to the Iranian Revolution (1979), the Green Movement (2009) and the Woman, Life, Freedom protests (2022-2023). The article shows that trauma and fear originating in pre-revolutionary politics and strengthened in the post-revolutionary period in Iran are knotted with conditional nostalgia. Their interlinkage has an impact on the decisions that these first-generation Iranians in Spain take in relation to their (non)participation in public and visible contentious diaspora politics.