MADRID: Activists from the Indignados (Outraged) protest movement that grew out of Spain’s economic crisis took power in the country’s two biggest cities Saturday after ruling conservatives suffered major losses in May’s local elections.

Former judge Manuela Carmena, a communist in her youth, was sworn in as mayor of Madrid on Saturday morning, while 41-year-old anti-eviction activist Ada Colau became Barcelona’s first female mayor in the afternoon.

Supporters shouted “Yes, it is possible!” — the rallying cry of the Indignados protest movement that swept the country in 2011 — as the two women were voted into office.

In the Spanish capital, Carmena ended 24 years of conservative Popular Party rule.

“I promise to loyally respect the duties involved in being mayor of Madrid,” she said as she was sworn in, minutes after the city council officially voted her in as leader of the city of three million.

Carmena became mayor after her leftist platform, Ahora Madrid, forged an alliance with the main opposition Socialists after the governing Popular Party suffered heavy setbacks in local and regional elections on May 24.

“We are at the service of the citizens of Madrid. We want to govern by listening. We want them to call us by our first names,” Carmena said.

Highlighting her concern with poverty in Spain, where many live precariously even though the worst of the crisis is over, Carmena pledged to help people like a 63-year-old woman named Julia she met on the capital’s main square, Puerta del Sol, who lives on 300 euros ($340) a month.

Madrid suffers a 16 percent unemployment rate, while many who have jobs do not earn enough to get through the month.

Carmena has promised to stamp out corruption, develop public transport, increase subsidies for poor families and slash the mayor’s salary by more than half to 45,000 euros ($51,000).

Many of the new mayor’s supporters come from the Indignados movement that occupied Spanish squares four years ago, demanding an end to government spending cuts to health care and education, and to corruption.

Carmena’s platform includes neighborhood associations, environmentalist groups and Spain’s new anti-austerity party, Podemos, whose strong gains will now be put to the test.