Barcelona: Massana school occupation

By: sisulscz - September 11th, 2020  Filed under: Communique

The abandoned Massana School, has been occupied for a soup kitchen and emergency accommodation. The action has been vindicated by the Housing Union and the Raval Mutual Support Network. The occupation which was made public at the end of a protest procession that started at 8 pm on June 23rd in Plaza Salvador Seguí, was attended by about 250 people.

This occupation is not the only one that has existed in the old Massana School. In the spring of 2018, a group of immigrants had occupied to denounce the job insecurity experienced by the group and to demand solutions from the administrations.

The groups denounce the state of a building “abandoned for years by the institutions” and declared that it will become the “base of operations of the popular movement of the Raval”.

“We warn the institutions that we intend to stay, and that for every step they take against us, we will take three,” they said in a statement read minutes after the occupation was made public. The intention of the occupation is to provide a place in the Mutual Support Network, the Housing Union and the Popular Food Network.

Excerpted from Iberia: Hundreds of Mutual Aid networks as Covid Collapses Capitalism

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Barcelona: Despegando Squatting Manual

By: sisulscz - September 11th, 2020  Filed under: Communique

Here you have a brief manual about squatting in Barcelona, constructed from personal experiences, legal resources and texts from the Squatting Office. The purpose of L’Oficina per l’Okupació (OfiOK) is tackling legal and technical problems regarding squatting abandoned places, keeping in mind the political significance of the action as well as the social aspects. we have chosen to make a practical manual as a quick reference and for mass distribution.

If you have any question visit the OfiOK or send an email to oficinaokupacio [at] sindominio [dot] net, look out for other manuals or consult other squatters. Good luck and happy squatting!

Version1 pdf
L’Oficina per l’Okupació

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Spanish state: What is behind the campaign against squatting?

By: fawda - August 28th, 2020  Filed under: essay

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]

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Barcelona: About the Cinètika, on free and self-managed spaces

By: fawda - February 5th, 2020  Filed under: Communique

Our solidarity, mutual support and recognition of the humble, consistent, lively and generous daily work that the Cinètika does from an anti-capitalist, feminist, libertarian and inclusive position, open to all the neighbors and all the struggles of the neighborhood and the city. A work of resistance and construction of alternatives from direct action and self-organization. Also from critical culture, constant debate. There is no better discourse than the practice and it is already a few years of having recovered from money, from the market a space, occupying it, making it public without it being institutional. This shows that it is possible to do things in order without authority, that it can work without subsidies. A space for creation, to experiment freely.

There are more and more of them, and they can be seen in experiences such as the Cinètika. They encourage us to know that they exist, that we can use them, that we can support ourselves by creating networks of people and places where we can organize ourselves. It is not by chance that in Barcelona and in so many others, so much money wasted from institutions, so much bureaucracy and entertainment professionals, is born and is maintained in the face of cultural and political mediocrity. Experiences of free thought, of counter-culture, of free communities. Essays on the world we want to build. [Read More]

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Barcelona: We reoccupied Ca La Trava

By: fawda - July 27th, 2019  Filed under: Communique, News

We have returned to Ca La Trava, now an empty plot, and we are not planning to leave. This space, until now closed, will again be open to the neighborhood, and we will defend it as we have defended our houses. We want it to be again a trench from which to resist the onslaught of the speculators and give war to all those who are destroying our neighborhood. If in Ca La Trava they make luxury flats we all lose, and we can’t allow that.

These are times of empty phrases, of euphemisms, of symbolisms without content and of politicians contradicting each new declaration. For this reason, we want to make it clear that when we say “Ca La Trava will never be luxury flats” we say it as seriously as possible. The struggle of Ca La Trava is not a lost struggle, and resquatting is not an improvised decision or the fruit of sentimentalism. Our goal is to win and we are convinced that we will. [Read More]

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London: Call out for a noise demo in solidarity with Barcelona’s war on gentrification

By: fawda - July 7th, 2019  Filed under: Communique, News

On Monday 8th July at 8.30am, activists will gather in front of Blackstone offices at 40 Berkley Square in London W1 J5AL for a noise demo to show solidarity with Barcelona’s residents fighting against gentrification.

Blackstone Group, a New York based multinational private equity firm and the World’s largest alternative investment company*, is the biggest property and hotel owner in Spain. The firm, along other large companies such as Goldman Sachs, Apollo Management and Cerberus, have been buying tens of thousands of residential properties in Spain and then raising rents and evicting thousands of long-term tenants to make space for richer and more “desirable” residents: or just leaving homes to rot empty while their value increases. [Read More]

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Madrid-Barcelona: Estate agents attacked in solidarity with the CSOA La Gatonera and the CSO Ka La Trava

By: fawda - November 2nd, 2018  Filed under: Communique, News

Thursday September 27, the windows of estate agency Tecnocasa in Vallekas were shattered. The agency was also covered in paint. This action aims to encourage the comrades of the CSOA La Gatonera (Carabanchel-Madrid) and Ka La Trava (Gràcia-Barcelona), as well as all the people who struggle in defence of squats as a revolutionary tool.
Neighbourhoods are being transformed by capitalist speculation, gentrification being a tightening of screws in a cyclical process that affects all the cities of the world. Real estate agencies and other capitalist entities such as banks and speculators are responsible. Let’s spread the attack against them and build bridges based on solidarity and attack.
Refusing to negotiate with the State, the town hall or private property and resisting the scoundrels and the police must have an echo of solidarity in the form of seeking and spreading the struggle. This is only the beginning and we call for the reproduction of the attack, overcoming any path of mediation and negotiation with power. We do not negotiate with the State and capital. [Read More]

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Barcelona: Can Bee Update

By: sisulscz - April 26th, 2018  Filed under: News

CSO La Palmira has been permanently evicted.

Some of us opened a CSO (social center okupa) at the old hippy house Can Bee and are actively supporting the squat network in Kollserola, the nature park north of Barcelona.

The collective works together to recycle food at the market and has monthly meetings, rotating between the squats Ca l’Avia, La Experimental, Matakrostas (if we resist eviction tomorrow!), La Folklorika, 7 Mansions, La Xesca, Kan Pasqual and Can Masdeu. We’re forming working groups for police repression, a radical library, and a comprehensive directory of abandoned houses in the area.

We are also promoting a local fair currency and a food co-op. [Read More]

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Barcelona: Fascists burn Ateneu Popular de Sarrià

By: sisulscz - April 2nd, 2018  Filed under: Communique, News

While the Spanish government and the press in Madrid have not stopped talking about violence by citizens and pro-independence groups, this morning (March29) fascists burned the Ateneu de Sarrià and painted it with Nazi and fascist symbols.

The site had already suffered attacks in advance, which have intensified since the referendum was held. On the walls of the patio have appeared swastikas,”Death to the CDR” (Citizens Defense).
[Read More]

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Spanish state: temporary end of the anarchist terrorism myth

By: fawda - February 7th, 2018  Filed under: Communique, News

After a total of 33 arrests, three years of investigation during which hundreds of documents were analysed, house searches across the country, hours of phone conversations recorded, bank accounts frozen, and, worst of all, after subjecting some of the accused to months of imprisonment, Spain’s Audiencia Nacional tribunal has closed the legal proceedings and state persecution of anarchists known as Operación Piñata. The reason: lack of sufficient evidence to put anyone on trial. The decision follows the request by defense lawyers to dismiss the investigation.

The police Operation Piñata joins Operations Pandora and Pandora II as criminal cases against the so-called ‘anarcho terrorism’, as the Secretary of State for Security, Francisco Martínez, called it during the morning when the arrests took place in March 2015.

Five of the twelve defendants under Operación Piñata were placed in custody for months. The arrest warrants made reference to acts of sabotage, possession of explosives and even possible criminal offenses related to trafficking of narcotics or psychotropic substances’: none of which was supported by evidence. [Read More]

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Barcelona: Eviction of la Rimaia

By: xxx - June 15th, 2017  Filed under: News

This morning, wednesday June 14th, 2017, the Mossos d’Esquadra (police force of Catalonia) have evicted la Rimaia squat, located at 12 Ronda de Sant Pau. Occupied several times, the last time it has been occupied was between April 20th, 2016 and… June 14th, 2017. [Read More]

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Barcelona: How solidarity and mutual aid saved Barcelona’s Can Vies Squat for eviction and destruction

By: fawda - May 13th, 2017  Filed under: essay, video

bcn27m_9The Can Vies social centre in Barcelona made headlines around the world when its eviction led to five consecutive nights of rioting in late May 2014. But the social center has a longer history than this.

Can Vies, originally built in 1879 to stock construction materials for the city’s subway, became the headquarters of the anarcho-syndicalist CNT transport union during the 1930s Spanish Revolution. Following Franco’s victory in 1939, the building became the center for a fascist, hierarchal labor union.

In 1997, the building was abandoned by its owners, Barcelona’s transport authority (TMB), and was subsequently squatted by the neighborhood’s youth. Since then, the Centro Social Autogestionado Can Vies has become a well-used and well-loved community space providing a variety of services to the people of Sants, a neighborhood with a strong tradition of cooperatives. [Read More]

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