Ateneu Eixample, a nine year old self-managed social centre, was evicted today in Barcelona.
Source – https://twitter.com/AteneuEixample
Ateneu Eixample, a nine year old self-managed social centre, was evicted today in Barcelona.
Source – https://twitter.com/AteneuEixample
Can Vies social centre in Barcelona recently hit the headlines across the world when its eviction led to five consecutive nights of protest and rioting. But the story is much bigger than that. At the time of writing, the social centre is being peacefully re-constructed and a Can Vies crowd-funding campaign has gathered more than €17.000 already. The goal is to gather €70.000 in solidarity with those arrested during the protests and to buy all the materials necessary to re-build the Social Centre.
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The #ReconstruïmCanVies process was launched on May 31 when more than a thousand people worked on rubble removal in the demolished chapel. That day, the collective boost made everyone dream about recovering what the City Council and the District of Sants-Montjuïc, through TMB (Public Transport Corporation) wanted to take us away. We recovered the street, lost our fear and empowered ourselves to stay there: to rebuild in peace what they violently destroyed.
Why do we want to rebuild Can Vies?
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The morning demo on Day 6 was a huge success. After 5 nights of rioting Barcelona Council had declared the ‘demolition of Can Vies suspended’.
In reality the protestors had already stopped demolition work by burning the machinery on day 2. However when we arrived on Saturday morning the 1ooo’s of riot police were nowhere to be seen.
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What happened in Barcelona this past week isn’t over. In the present circumstances it would not be a cliché to say that the fires that were set from the 26th to the 31st of May, and they numbered in the hundreds and several of them were as large as the wide avenues they built to prevent our revolts, live on in our hearts. Tens of thousands of people have won transformative experiences. When they see a cop, an intersection, a construction site, a dumpster, a bank, a surveillance camera, a journalist, new meanings and new possibilities appear unbidden before their eyes.
Though it isn’t over, the struggle here has entered another phase. If things kick off again in the next days, if streets are wrested away from the forces of order and columns of smoke pour skyward once more, it will be different people who have taken the initiative, and for different reasons.
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[Days two and three below]
On Monday, May 26, police from the Mossos d’Escuadra evicted the 17-year-old squatted social center Can Vies, starting at the atypically late hour of noon, perhaps due to heavy morning rains. Can Vies had an open eviction date, but the choice of day was to be expected as Sunday was elections for the European Parliament (which, incidentally, saw a sharp increase in the presence of far right and far left parties). The party in power never wants to start unpredictable conflicts in the weeks before an election, and the day after an election, the media is full of related news.
The 3rd time lucky ? There’s a new eviction lawsuit against the Expropriated Bank, which is one of the most active Occupied Social centers in Barcelona, with dozens of varied activities every week.
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Evidently the authorities dont dare to risk a community uprising in their Barcelona pot of gold. After a big local demo and a host of community resistance it was announced the eviction of the iconic Can Vies centre, occupied now for 17 years, was cancelled. … or was it??
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CanVies is an Occupied assembly run Social center, set in what was once a CNT Union Center 80 years ago, The occupation has lasted 17 years and has local support. In calling for ‘local defense’ against eviction the occupiers refer to the successful Gamonal community uprising in Burgos just 2 weeks ago. The evictions of 4 other Catalan social centers are coinciding in the next weeks… [Read More]
The iconic Carbonería (La Carbó) is about to be evicted. The property is now owned by Barclays Bank, well known in Barcelona as Butchers of mortgage defaulters.
The Carboneria is an’Occupied Self Managed Social Center’, working on the Assembly system and deeply immersed in the local community.
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I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something; and because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do the something that I can do. by Edward Everett Hale
In words of Manuel Vázquez Montalbán, “kill the exception to confirm the rule”, and so, keep the smooth functioning of the system. The new society of control is here. It is not us who have discovered it, we’ve just suffered it, as everyone else.
A few days ago, the group Stop Control detected a police CCTV camera in the Esperança hospital looking at us, at the Kasa de la Muntanya squat. This group has made a step forward and has decided to go where this vigilance, dominance and espionage device was located. They rendered it useless and, not considering it enough, they made their action public. [Read More]