Last Saturday a gigantic 10 screen cinema was occupied as an autonomous social center in Barcelona. The abandoned building is owned by the City Council who had failed to find a use for it. The action began as an advertised 4 day series of debates and workshops, meals etc… with a whole range of strikers, squatters, immigrants, feminist struggles etc.. taking part.. all to be held in a local square, and beginning with a street parade around historic struggle sites.,.
The parade ended with the Cinètika occupation
The liberated area, with thousands of square meters and ten cinemas will become, henceforth, an open space in the neighborhood. The promoters of the project want to build a squatting assembly, feminist and outside the institutions. No alcohol will be sold at the venue, as the group believes that “alcoholism and drugs are a problem in the workers neighborhoods.”
True to its name (in classical Greek “that which moves”) the Cinètika hosted during the whole weekend a whirlwind of activities that have combined cleaning and clearance of the facilities with big publiv meetings on making the independent anti capitalist Palomar barrio, a series of lectures, meals and screenings of documentaries scheduled until Tuesday.( see poster)
The lobby was filled with talks and debates which have included the participation of the workers in the Telefonica struggle, the Barcelona Metropolitan Transport strikers(TMB), the Auditorium and Liceu conflicts, the movement against mortgage evictions PAH, the Union of Popular Street Vendors , All Strike, the Stop the Fare Rises platform, the writer Joni D. and the bus driver and the councillor Josep Garganté CUP.
“Refuse to continue watching passively the media circus of symbolic televised statements of the ‘new left’ institutions, while on the street there is no change in our living conditions which continue to worsen,” states the occupation manifesto entitled ‘End of the show: a letter to the districts from the new squatted cinema in Sant Andreu, published by Cinètika on Indymedia Barcelona.
“We want to equip ourselves with the tools and weapons necessary to build neighborhoods and strong communities […] able to build ways of living and meet their needs apart from and against relationships of domination and oppression that characterize today’s society “.
Regarding the legal aspects, sources have told the group that “although we have seen police and plain clothes patrols around the cinema, to date there has been no incident. Neither have we received messages from the City Council. ”
Indeed the City Council is in an awkward position, controlled by Barcelona en Común, and led by Ada Colau, herself an ex squatting activist against mortgage evictions , which makes an immediate eviction unlikely, but there must be intense pressure to stop the wave of occupations getting out of hand.
How is it possible to seize a multi cinema in Barcelona, but unthinkable in most other cities? The occupiers in San Andreu barrio have been active and trusted for many years, their tactics are excellent and there is a long history of anarchist type self organisation in the city.
Cinètika make this assessment of the progress of the project. “In the cracks of the Barcelona Brand Name we are making combative living spaces: a cinema opened up to fill it with life,”
La Cinetika – Cinema occupied for an autonomous, feminist, anticapitalist space in Sant Andreu.
Rambla Fabra i Puig, 32 (M L1 Fabra i Puig)
https://palomarautonom.wordpress.com
source: The Free https://thefreeonline.wordpress.com/2016/04/08/occupy-spring-in-barcelona/
