In Spain, eviction of Barcelona squat sparks national unrest

BARCELONA, Spain — The summer in Barcelona typically begins on the first of June. As you cycle round the city, the newly strong sun brings certain smells to the fore.

Occasionally a waft of frangipani or cannabis smoke will cut above the ubiquitous exhaust fumes, but this weekend in the southern suburb of Sants, another fragrance was added to the mix; the cloying, sandy aroma that fills the air after a demolition.

Last Monday, as the media picked over the results of the elections to the European Parliament, police and bailiffs led the eviction of Can Vies; a squat established in 1997, in a building owned by Barcelona's public/private transport consortium TMB.

Diggers moved in the next day, tearing down much of the facade, while the demonstrations that had started in Sants from the moment of the eviction gathered pace. As the week wore on, groups from around Barcelona and further afield joined the struggle, extending the protest and the destruction into the town center on Thursday — awakening tourists from their Vicky Cristina Barcelona daydream, and prompting Barcelona's mayor, Xavier Trias, a man known for bending over backwards to protect commercial interests, to call a temporary halt to the demolition.

Often characterised as 'working class,' Sants is in many ways one of the last authentic barrios in Barcelona.

Just a little too far from the center to have suffered the planned gentrification that has consumed large swathes of the city since the 1992 Olympics, its winding mid 19th century streets house Latin American produce shops, Bangladeshi hairdressers and Catalan butchers. It doesn’t exactly feel like a hotbed of grassroots political activism. But as the neurological center of Barcelona's anarchist and libertarian movement, and the home of one of the most active asembleas de barrio, (the horizontally organised weekly drop in sessions set up in the wake of 15M), that’s exactly what it is.

At 7 P.M. on Monday June 2, as the sun set on the day King Juan Carlos announced his abdication, a small shifting group gathered behind the wire fence sealing off the crumbling building. Only half demolished, the site has been turned into a temporary shrine to the week’s struggle. A charred JCB sits on a pile of rubble, adorned with a ragged looking teddy bear and graffittied banners calling for “Resistance!”

Since the following Saturday, a human chain has been at work, rebuilding the walls brick by brick. Given the councils' determination to complete the demolition sooner rather than later, it’s a gesture at best, but also a powerful symbol of the community organisation that is the backbone of the growing anti establishment movement.

It also holds the key to why these protests blew up so fast, so quickly.

Compared to other European countries, and much to the bafflement of outside commentators, Spain’s response to the crisis has been relatively peaceful.

For the most part, Spaniards have reacted to post-crash austerity with brash political optimism — the 15M movement — and resignation — mass emigration. But following the ultra-conservative government’s introduction of measures that result in jail terms for people engaging in peaceful protest, citizens are now less inclined to take part in the kind of mass gatherings exemplified by the 15M marches for democracy, and 2012’s Rodea el Congreso movements.

The anger however, has by no means dissipated: On the national level, activist pressure groups such as the PAH, and the Iaoflutas — pensioners against austerity — enjoy mass popular support online, and from much of the mainstream press.

But it’s in the weekly assembleas; of the kind hosted at Can Vies where the true strength of the protest movement lies. While their aim is to primarily address local issues through direct action such as soup kitchens and picketing evictions, the groups are linked through informal media channels, and through their common root in 15M. When they need to organise, they can, and rapidly.

The strength of these grassroots networks has allowed small scale local conflicts, often over planning decisions or corrupt local politicians, to grow quickly in size and scope. January’s riots in the Gamonal district of the northern Spanish city of Burgos, became the center of national media attention, as protests against the construction of a new boulevard served as a catalyst for wider discontent. In that case, the protests raged for a week, resulting in 47 arrests, amid an unprecedented police crackdown.

Similarly, in Barcelona, as news of the eviction in Can Vies spreads, so too did support from groups around the city.

“There were people from barrios I’ve never had contact with, protesting in their areas,” a black clad activist in Ray-Ban Balorama sunglasses told me as he killed time before a meeting to discuss next steps. “We knew there’d be a response, after all Can Vies was an important symbol in the community. But we didn’t think it would spread so far.”

While talking animatedly, he still seemed awestruck by the events of the last week.

“It’s not the first time they’ve closed a squat,” he said. “And even when the government overturned the dacción en pago [a reform to the mortgage law], people didn’t come out on the street like this.”

It doesn’t take a political scientist to conclude that the motivations of the protesters weren’t limited to stopping the eviction: “It says it right there”, my new activist friend told me, pointing to graffiti on one of the metal fences around the destroyed squat. “Fight the closure of Can Vies, Fight Capitalism,” it reads.

In fact, everywhere I look in Sants, and around the city, I see signs linked to the countrywide struggle against austerity and authority. At the epicenter of the unrest, in Sants, walls are plastered with posters calling for people to take to the streets to change the system. Bank windows as far north as Barcelona’s leafy and bourgeois Eixample bore the slogan “Salvemos Can Vies,” along with an anarchist A. On Sunday, #effectecanvies was still trending nationally on twitter.

As one half of the anti-establishment left prepares its assault on the political system from within, the local assembleas seem increasingly focused on street level activism that achieves short term goals related to their communities, while drawing attention to and support from the wider struggle. Refreshingly, so far those going down the political route haven’t distanced themselves from the protests – David Fernandez, president of the Catalan Nationalist CUP party has publicly offered his support. Podemos also expressed their support through twitter.

A short walk from Can Vies is another CSO, Can Batlló. With its bar, library and performance space, it has more in common with certain warehouse district art spaces than with the traditional idea of a squat.

An allotment grows organic vegetables, and local teenagers loiter on the sidewalks outside the bar. Behind them, in white paint on a rust colored garage door, reads the slogan: “Si Can Vies cierra, Barri en Guerra” – ‘If Can Vies is closed, the neighborhood will go to war.’

Whether the events of Burgos and Barcelona will repeat over the summer remains to be seen, but the climate for it seems to be just about perfect.