Madrid: La Ingobernable opens a Social Rights Office in the center of the city

The collective that squatted the building at 39 Gobernador St. announced this morning that they have occupied a building at 5 Cruz St. to “resist in common and conquer new rights”.

With the slogan “Social rights to change everything”, the collective of La Ingobernable has started this new project that they have called Office of Social Rights (ODS, Oficina de Derechos Sociales). In a communiqué they explain that it will serve to “resist in common and conquer new rights” because they cannot “wait any longer” and point out that the current crisis of covid19 “hits us with other pandemics: hunger lines, distrust, fascism, precariousness, racism, speculation, loneliness, pessimism and fear,” they claim.

The ODS will have seven axes that respond to seven social urgencies: the right to housing, the right to food, the right to protest, labor precariousness, transfeminisms and dissidence, basic income and community health. It is this context of social emergency, which has prompted the collective to raise the slogan “Social rights to change everything”, with a commitment to “resist in common” and open this space where “develop, protect and fight for social rights”. [Read More]

Madrid: Ateneo Libertario de Vallekas evicted

At 7 a.m. on October 23rd, numerous riot police vans came to the social center to proceed with their eviction. The collective calls for a rally this afternoon at 8:00 p.m. in the Amos Acero Park.

This morning the threat hanging over the Ateneo Libertario of Vallecas was fulfilled. At 6:00 a.m. a caravan of anti-riot vans arrived at the entrance of the Ateneo, at 59 Párroco Don Emilio Franco Street. It was not until one hour later, at 7:00 a.m., that the anti-riot agents managed to break down the door to gain access to the interior of the space.

According to sources from the collective that used the space consulted by El Salto, “there was only one person inside, who has not been arrested. The building was an old textile factory that had been unused for more than seven years when it was squatted in 2014. Up to six anti-riot vans have been placed along the street of the Parish Priest Don Emilio Franco, blocking the front of the building. [Read More]

Madrid: First attempt to evict the Ateneo Libertario in Vallekas stopped. The struggle continues

On September 16, it was again made clear that solidarity and direct action are the best weapon we have as a means of defense against the state and repression. About 150 people from Vallekas and other neighborhoods of the city gathered at the door of the Ateneo Libertario de Vallekas to prevent the eviction of the space. This is not just the eviction of a space, it is the defense of squatting as a tool of struggle in the social war, as a tool to create with our own hands, outside of parties and institutions, spaces of struggle, meeting and learning.

And we achieved this (thanks to all of you). We had a modest deployment of journalists, municipal police vans and the district commissioner. Due to the flow of solidarity, the judicial secretary had no choice but to pass by. Now, any day and without notice, the Ateneo can be evicted. [Read More]

Madrid: Imminent threat of eviction of the Ateneo Libertario de Vallekas

At the end of August we received a nice notification from the court that on September 16th the police and the locksmith would come to the space to proceed with the eviction. Our space, the Ateneo Libertario de Vallekas, has been serving for two years as a place for activities, debates, assemblies, gymnasium and a meeting point for various libertarian initiatives.

Thus we find ourselves in Vallekas, a neighborhood in the city of Madrid, a breeding ground for capitalist speculation, led by successive city councils, regardless of their political persuasion; the neighborhood is a breeding ground for real estate companies, banks, vulture funds, big landowners, journalists and the occasional submissive citizen. Vallekas has been through these speculative processes like gentrification, which have already devastated the center of the city and reached the working class neighborhoods of the periphery years ago. The idea is simple: to turn the neighborhood into an immense commercial center where the only possible relationship is that which is structured around consumption, which expels and pursues poverty, criminalizing it in favor of a new profile of inhabitant with greater purchasing power. The rise in rents is only the tip of the iceberg. The city of the rich is built on the expulsion, the precarization of life and the impossibility of free use of the street and space by its inhabitants. [Read More]

Spanish state: What is behind the campaign against squatting?

Panic wave. The looming economic crisis has begun to negatively affect the real estate market: rental prices are falling, rents are falling.

Breakfast with alarming news: squatting is still going on, the insecurity of everyone (as we are all owners) is at its highest. Radio advertisement of a security company: “Burglary and squatting alarm equipment”. Report in a program of maximum audience to the heroes of the companies kicking out squatters: five bodybuilders already in their forties explain their work; the legality of it seems doubtful. Statements by a politician: “One of these days you go on vacation and when you return, because they consider the house to be empty, they give it to their squatters’ friends – in reference to a well-known ‘leftist’ party”. The emergency campaign for the problem of squatting is continuous, insistent, and crushing. The fear, converted into a wave of panic, reaches a good part of the population. Rumors of home invasions have acquired the rank of “I know the case of a friend of a friend who had his house occupied, and blah, blah, blah”.

But what are we talking about when we say ‘squatting’? Obviously, of entering to live in a property of which one lacks all legitimate rights (understand, sanctioned by the property). [Read More]

Madrid: The High Court of Justice rules that the eviction of La Ingobernable was illegal

The Madrid High Court of Justice (TSJM) ruled on two appeals filed by La Ingobernable in June and November 2019, confirming that the Madrid City Council did not have the legitimacy to carry out the eviction but claiming that “the damages are not irreparable”.

Bitter victory for Madrid’s neighbours. Justice agrees with La Ingobernable and shows how partisan interests are above legality and the common good. The TSJM ruled in favour of the Social Centre La Ingobernable, arguing that “the Madrid City Council lacks legitimacy” over the eviction that took place on 13 November 2019 in Calle Gobernador 39.

La Ingobernable denounced that “the City Council did not have the legitimacy to initiate and process the eviction process because there was a current assignment to the Ambasz Foundation and in any case they should have initiated the procedure through criminal law” explains Naomi Abad, lawyer from Red Jurídica who filed the appeal with the TSJM in June 2019. “The administration was perfectly aware that they did not have the legitimacy to do so and yet they ordered the eviction procedure. [Read More]

Madrid: The government evicts La Ingobernable taking advantage of the state of emergency

No matter who we tell, the reaction is always the same. WTF. The self-proclaimed ‘government of change’, the one that claims to be guided by the demands of the social movements, has consummated an eviction in times of Coronavirus. We would never imagine this reality of confinement, police state and restriction of most activities. Nor could we imagine that, in the midst of this situation, we would find out, while we were walking the dog, that we were being evicted by stealth. We don’t know if they have been more cowardly, more clumsy or more deluded. They have had the cowardice to take advantage of the fact that the social center is empty, and those who have recovered the space are being responsible by staying in their homes, to break out of their own confinement, kick in the door, take down the banners, and change the locks. They have had the clumsiness to do this by committing resources and security forces, at a time when no one will believe that this is really an essential activity. And, above all, they have been so deluded as to think that this will get us killed.

The Ministry of Justice, headed by Juan Carlos Campo Moreno, wanted us to believe that this procedure was part of those that the Royal Decree of the state of emergency calls “essential for the protection of the general interest”. They don’t give a shit: while we devote our forces and capacities to supporting health workers by printing 3D masks or supporting networks in our neighbourhoods, they dismantle a social center without even proposing an alternative use. Or perhaps, it’s only the continuation of five years of vacancy and neglect of a building in one of the most exclusive areas of the capital. And they call this “general interest” and “priority” in times of pandemic. [Read More]

Madrid: The Government wants to evict La Ingobernable in 24 hours despite the state of emergency

This Tuesday, April 14, we learned through publication in the BOE (Official State Bulletin) that the Ministry of Justice was giving us 48 hours to leave the new open space occupied by La Ingobernable in Calle Alberto Bosch, 4.

The deadline is today. And we are not only faced with a new demonstration of the absolute lack of interest in dialogue between this Ministry and Minister Juan Carlos Campo, but also with a particular use of the right of an administration that has decided that its priority in the midst of the quarantine is to resume a process such as the eviction of La Ingobernable, omitting even the right of allegation, all in order to deprive Madrid of a self-managed space. In this case, there are several reasons why it seems to us to be a particularly shabby move.

Firstly, we cannot even remotely understand how this government has set as a priority in the current context the resumption of the administrative process for the eviction of this social center. A place that, as we already defended in our previous communiqué, will be essential, like the rest of the social centers, for the post-quarantine scenario. [Read More]

Madrid: Imagine not having social centers

Last week, in the midst of all the commotion caused by the current health crisis, we were stupefied by the publication in the BOE (Official State Bulletin) of the resumption of the administrative process to evict the new social centre at Calle Alberto Bosch, 4. Despite the fact that last 14 March, with the Royal Decree of Covid19 , all administrative procedures, including ours, were stopped, the Ministry of Justice has decided to resume it on the grounds of “public health reasons”. As we have made public, our activity in the building is on hold since the declaration of the state of emergency, following the recommendations and restrictions implemented to curb the epidemic. Obviously, we conclude from this that the rush to resume the eviction procedure is based on political will. Taking advantage of the state of exception that prevents us from defending ourselves, the intention is to carry out a new aggression against self-managed social centers and deprive the city of Madrid of an essential space for social movements.

This situation has made us ask ourselves some questions: what role will social centres play in the coming period? Is it really relevant, in the midst of this gigantic systemic crisis, that a space like the new headquarters of the Ungovernable should disappear? Can we imagine a Madrid without social centres? [Read More]

Madrid: La Ingobernable, we are still in the heart of Madrid

For our friends.
For the ones who fight every day.
For those who are gone.
In this month of feminist revolt, of organized rage, of joy and of struggle, we, the neighbors of Madrid, make public the recovery of the building in Calle Alberto Bosch 4, as a new common and open space in the heart of Madrid. Now, in this week more than ever, we must remember the role that social centers have had, have and will have for the feminist movement, as a space for convergence, construction and self-organisation. The attack on social centers is undoubtedly a direct attack on feminism, which we are not prepared to tolerate.
In recent years we have witnessed a lamentable spectacle in which a few people share out the city, selling it to the highest bidder or handing it over to friends while others are thrown out of our neighbourhoods. Recently we learned that the building of La Ingobernable (Paseo del Prado 30) was once again being given, in the style of the PP, to a foundation directed by the former mayor Gallardón to build a museum instead of the so promised endowments for the neighborhood that the current mayor, Martínez-Almeida, was advocating during the electoral campaign. This story is very familiar to us because some years ago the also ex-mayor Botella already gave it, for 1 euro and at 75 years old, to a foundation friend of the PP. [Read More]

Madrid and Berlin: brochure from squatters and resisting spots

A sea of possibilities in the concrete desert: Territory, city and insurrection’ – Madrid & Berlin

This publication is a compilation of texts that emerges from the discussions and the work we started in the wake of the event “A sea of possibilities in the concrete desert. Territory, city and insurrection” that happened in Madrid during June 2019 in la Emboscada and Local Anarquista Motín. Is the product of a joint work of some comrades from Berlin and Madrid, that does not finish with the publication of this pages and pretends to extend the discussion that we have shared.

What does it mean to take territory against the State and Capitalism? How can we take it through our struggles? How does it work domination in the territories that we inhabit? Does it mean our way of living in a territory a conflict with the system?

December 2019,
Madrid and Berlin. [Read More]

Madrid: La Emboscada under eviction threat

Friday December 20th
Hello comrades,
We write this communiqué from La Emboscada (Tetuán, Madrid) to inform you that last December 17th a judge ordered our precautionary eviction based on a complaint made by one of the owners of our Anarchist Occupied Space La Emboscada.
According to this report, the eviction can be very close, in less than 20 days. Taking into account this information, we decided to fight with all our capacities to prevent this eviction. So we called for a demonstration in the evening on the day of the eviction, at 8pm, and we are counting on your support. The meeting place will not be published until the last moment, so we encourage you to be attentive. We decided not to remain silent while we see dozens and dozens of eviction processes both in housing and social centers.
We decided not to give up or negotiate with those people who want to defend their private property above all, because we know that private property only seeks the individual benefit of some and we know that the State defends and supports these old class enemies already known.
We know that this case is not an isolated case (we have all the previous facts occurred this last year) but it responds to a normal capitalist functioning and structure. We know that the owner is not the devil who escapes the norm or the common sense accepted by most citizens. So we have decided to approach it as one more conflict to be faced and with all the will and mutual support that is given among all those who understand and are in solidarity with this fight against Capital, laws and State. [Read More]