El Kubo and CSO La Ruïna are two liberated buildings in La Bonanova (an upper class neighbourhood of Barcelona), which with much insistence and after two re-occupations have resisted for the last seven and four years respectively, being home to many people and hosting hundreds of activities.
After the last eviction date of El Kubo, dictated for March 25th, which we managed to suspend, and after a month of resistance where we received daily attacks, on Tuesday May 2nd we decided to make an antifascist call to defend both spaces from the harassment of political parties disguised as citizen’s response.
We understand that getting to the gates of La Ruïna in a militarized neighborhood has already been a triumph. First of all, we would like to thank all of you who came to support us. We still need your presence and that solidarity continues to spread.
During the same night they threw all kinds of objects at us and tried to set fire to the garden behind our house. It was not the first arson attempt that we lived through. These attacks are added to a long list that has been escalating, as we have said, in frequency and intensity. And that goes from stones and bottles, pyrotechnics, gasoline and fire, to pellet shots from balconies.
We are not willing to passively accept that they attack us, nor that they put our physical integrity at risk. Nor are we willing to accept that they turn us into a target for electoral interests, echoing our reaction to the attacks and showing our self-defense as gratuitous violence, thus legitimizing all the violence we receive.
The strategy they are using is very dangerous. They decontextualize images of very tense moments. They invent and manipulate information to the point of nonsense. They justify the agressions and embolden the aggressors.
This same strategy is being used against other self-managed spaces in Barcelona. And it is the result of all the social hatred that they have been generating and feeding particularly in recent years, which not only criminalizes us, but dehumanizes us.
What began with an attempt of Valents (right-wing party) to scratch a few votes, is escalating without brakes and gaining followers. First Vox (far-right-wing party) and Ciutadans (right-wing party) joined in, and now also the company Desokupa which has threatened to come with 50 thugs next Thursday the 11th and carry out an extrajudicial eviction.
Faced with this provocation and intolerable escalation, now more than ever we decided to defend these spaces and what they represent. Spaces where we have grown, where we have reaffirmed and politicized ourselves collectively to counteract the rise of neoliberalism.
We want to transmit the practical and symbolic importance that this situation has for us right now, not only because of everything we have already mentioned, the context, the media coverage and the violence, but also because of the potential we have and the loudspeaker that -paradoxically- we have been given, if we live this as what it is- a problem that concerns us all.
We are not going to tolerate any more aggression or become the victims. We are going to continue defending ourselves, because we have no choice but to resist and confront in the places where the class war is latent, public and private thugs, just as we did before. In the early morning of May 6th, another attempt was made to set fire to our house and we received various objects thrown at us.
We know it is going to be a complicated week, but we want to maintain a constant flow of information about everything that is happening.
We call on all collectives and individuals who feel that they can be challenged to make this situation their own. To the solidarity responses in the ways that are considered appropriate.
CABEZA ALTA
CSO La Ruïna
Carrer de Sant Joan de La Salle 4, Barcelona
https://squ.at/r/7yo0
El Kubo
Carrer de Sant Joan de La Salle 6, Barcelona
https://squ.at/r/9szo
Directory of squats in Barcelona: https://radar.squat.net/en/groups/city/barcelona/country/XC/squated/squat
Directory of squats in Catalonia: https://radar.squat.net/en/groups/country/XC/squated/squat
Directory of groups (social centers, collectives, squats) in Catalonia: https://radar.squat.net/en/groups/country/XC
Events in Catalonia: https://radar.squat.net/en/events/country/XC
Kontrapolis https://kontrapolis.info/10416/
