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.
The proliferation of narco-mafias, gambling houses and pimps in the neighborhood, on the one hand, and the police on the other, are but two axes of the same coin, which come to pave the way for repression and social control: The constant police abuse in the neighborhood, the policing of the streets, the constant crushing of fines during the state of emergency in the neighborhood, the racist raids, the video surveillance and its damned cameras, make up a Vallekas controlled by the new technologies and the police, where submission and consumption are the only possible means of communication.
The vast summer campaign against squatting in the media is nothing more than the pure essence of the class struggle: the rich defend private property and their interests by trying to make the poor make their fears their own. The speculators know that turbulent times are coming and have begun their offensive. In the face of this, we call for solidarity not only with the Ateneo Libertario of Vallekas and its eviction, but with squatting in general, as a tool of struggle in the social war and as a direct form of taking a roof over one’s head, to relate and fight from autonomy against political parties and power structures. The squatting opens many doors and possibilities that scare away the powerful. For example, it makes it possible to question the dynamics of work-consumption and for these to drag us down, by taking over our own homes and not being able to be used as a mechanism for pressure in the service of our bosses and bosses, who use the fear of losing our jobs, and consequently the housing we pay in the form of rent or mortgage, as a mechanism for pressure to tighten the screws on us. How can the capitalists not be afraid of squatting?
Each eviction, each resistance against professional thugs hired by the speculators (such as Desokupa), is an opportunity to confront the speculators and to put in place solidarity, encounter, direct action, complicity and struggle.
As long as private property and its world continue to exist, as long as Madrid continues to have thousands of empty houses and buildings, treasured by banks, real estate agencies and other speculators, and there are people without homes or who cannot afford a mortgage or rent, or simply do not feel like paying a speculator to have a roof over their heads, we will continue to squat.
We call for a rally to stop the eviction next September 16 at 9:00 a.m. at the door of the Ateneo: C/Parroco Don Emilio Franco no 59.
We ask you to be attentive to further information and calls. On the first Friday after the eviction, a call for the defence of the squatting will be made in Vallekas. Stay tuned for the time and place and future calls.
Solidarity with the Ateneo Libertario of Vallekas!
Solidarity with the squatted spaces!
No eviction, no eviction without a response!
Occupation, resistance and direct action
Ateneo Libertario de Vallekas
Calle Párroco Don Emilio Franco nº 59
28053 Madrid
ateneolibertariovallekas [at] riseup [dot] net
https://squ.at/r/6due
https://ateneolibertariovk.noblogs.org/
Some squats in Madrid: https://radar.squat.net/en/groups/city/madrid/squated/squat
Groups (social centres, collectives, squats) in Madrid: https://radar.squat.net/en/groups/city/madrid
Events in Madrid: https://radar.squat.net/en/events/city/Madrid
Directory of squats in the Iberian Peninsula:
Spanish State: https://radar.squat.net/en/groups/country/ES/squated/squat
Catalonia: https://radar.squat.net/en/groups/country/XC/squated/squat
Basque Country: https://radar.squat.net/en/groups/country/XE/squated/squat
Directory of groups (social centers, collectives, squats) in the Iberian Peninsula:
Spanish State: https://radar.squat.net/en/groups/country/ES
Catalonia: https://radar.squat.net/en/groups/country/XC
Basque Country: https://radar.squat.net/en/groups/country/XE
Events in the Iberian Peninsula:
Spanish State: : https://radar.squat.net/en/events/country/ES
Catalonia: https://radar.squat.net/en/events/country/XC
Basque Country: https://radar.squat.net/en/events/country/XE
A las barricadas http://alasbarricadas.org/noticias/node/44561
