Catalonia: eight arrested and squats raided

An anarchist group would be, according to the Mossos, the main responsible for the riots in Barcelona for the freedom of Pablo Hasel. Faced with the wide social response, especially among the youth, to the aberrant imprisonment of the rapper Pablo Hasel, the Catalan police already have those responsible, the scapegoats whom they intend to criminalize for social mockery and to hide, by the way, the brutal abuses committed by the riot police (a demonstrator loosing her eye, massive beating in Gràcia…).

Undoubtedly, they will continue to count on the overwhelming support of a political (central and regional governments), judicial and media apparatus that, as good servants of the economic powers, are interested in diverting attention from the real causes of the mobilizations, such as the growing authoritarianism and repression of the State (the scandalous imprisonment of Hasel is the umpteenth case), the rampant corruption, with the Bourbons at the head, or the social exclusion and lack of prospects in the face of an increasingly predatory capitalism. [Read More]

Barcelona: communique for the 8 arrested anarchist comrades of the Nabat squat in Mataró

Yesterday night (27th of february), around 9pm, 8 of our comrades were arrested, in Barcelona, after the last police charge in the demonstrations against the detention of Pablo Hasel, the curtailment of basic freedoms which all of us are suffering under, the repression and privation of our human rights.
We’re facing a strong authoritarian drift by the european governments which are taking the coronavirus as an excuse to repress and open the doors for a probable dictatorship.
The rage contained in this period of heavy restrictions explodes like so with 12 consecutive days of mobilizations and revolts. These are happenings which continually repeat throughout history, in this precise moment revolts are not only exploding in Europe but they are sprouting up in all the countries of the world, from Chile to China, with a lot of force.
In light of this repressive blow you’re going to have problems in all of squatted Maresme!
This communique is a call to participation, on part of the anarchist comrades of Nabat, in solidarity with everyone. [Read More]

Barcelona: Ca l’Espina under threat

The Fradera family wants to kick us out. After the eviction of the social center on the ground floor, they are attacking the second floor! The sentence of the first criminal trial has already arrived, the judge has decreed the eviction of this flat. In addition, the property has filed another civil complaint for the entire building.

They attack Ca l’Espina again. Right now, we are facing two clear threats:

1. THE EVICTION OF THE SECOND FLOOR. After the appeal we have filed, we are waiting for the date of the eviction. The sentence is only for this floor, they cannot set foot on the rest of the house.
2. THE CIVIL EVICTION OF THE ENTIRE BUILDING. We have received a civil lawsuit, as a result of the change of court to speed up the process. They give us 5 days to present the defense and prevent an immediate eviction.

The Fradera family filled a new complain to kick us out. They evicted the social center and left it empty, closed and abandoned. Except for a security guard who visited us periodically. Now, they have begun to do works causing the entire building to stagger with a sledgehammer. Their current goal, to do the same with the second floor. [Read More]

Barcelona: Massana school occupation

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

Barcelona: Despegando Squatting Manual

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

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]

Barcelona: Ca l’Espina still squatted despite the Mossos attempted to evict them

The group that previously squatted Ca la Trava and Ka la Kastanya denounces that the police operation that tried to evict the social center on Carrer d’Asturies was carried out without a court order.

At 7 a.m. on Wednesday, the Mossos d’Esquadra, made up of riot vans, occupied the Gràcia district of Barcelona. The objective was to evict Ca l’Espina, a squatted social center located at number 12 Asturias Street. “The police vans went from Fontana to Lesseps,” explains the group that occupied the building in January 2020. “There has been a totally disproportionate militarization of the neighborhood,” they add.

The apartment block in the centre of the city is made up of four floors of housing and a room on the ground floor. When the members of the project learned that the police wanted to break into Ca l’Espina, they blocked the access that goes from the premises to the houses in which about fifteen people live today. [Read More]

Barcelona: Ca l’Espina threatened, Bojous S.L. withdraws the complaints

Ca l’Espina, a building squatted last January at calle Astúries 12, in the Gràcia neighbourhood, is under threat of eviction. We are facing a legal process for a building that was abandoned and neglected, in which one of the floors was covered by a meter of garbage and debris. In the face of this threat, our request is clear: that the owner, the real estate company Bojous S.L., withdraw the complaint.

We know that many of you are wondering who is Bojous S.L.
Today we publish the properties of the so-called “small owner”: [Read More]

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

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]

Barcelona: We reoccupied Ca La Trava

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]

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

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]

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

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]