We publish below a translation of an article that appeared in the Madrid based Periódico Diagonal (07/05/2015), celebrating thirty years of okupations in the city. If okupations are central to any anti-capitalist politics, they are equally haunted by risks and dangers associated with compromising with public authorities, commercialisation, when not simply outright repression. The situation is rendered even more complicated when seemingly new radical political parties appear on stage, such as Syriza in greece, or Podemos in spain, parties that promise some kind of recognition, or at least acceptance. The article below touches, however modestly, on these issues. More importantly, it reminds us of the crucial role of okupations in the making of radical subjectivities.
The okupation of number 38 of Amparo Street, in the neighbourhood of Lavapiés, lasted a mere ten days in November of 1985, but its memory remains alive for its significance. It was the first in Madrid, following experiences in Catalonia and the Basque country, that proposed the idea of a critical and self-managed social centre that denounced real-estate speculation through direct action: to appropriate an empty building with the intention of opening it up to the neighbourhood. The first okupation with a k.
Minuesa, David Castilla, La Guindalera, La Eskalera Karakola, La Nevera or the different incarnations of the Laboratorio are a few of the projects that followed and that were able to give body to this seed and grant a use value to something that was left intentionally empty so as to gain exchange value.
Thirty years after 83 Amparo, the history of Madrid’s okupied social centres continues from the margins of a city devastated by the political influence of construction companies and a model of urbanism characterised more by clientalism and the ruthless search for wealth and power rather than the satisfaction of the needs of its inhabitants. El Patio Maravillas, that has operated in Malasaña since 2007, has announced that it will take a municipal space before the elections of the 24th of May as a response to the order of precautionary eviction that has weighed upon it since February and because of the absence of any response from the city government.
During the whole of this week, the Madrid collective Oficina de Vivienda has organised actions to commemorate the thirty years and to emphasise the relevance of the movement today. “Even though it last but a few hours, each okupation is important because it presupposes an attack on what could be called the waterline of the system that rests upon two basic pillars, private property and the laws which protect it. Okupation does not question possession – this house is mine because I am using it – but property – this house is mine even though I have dozens of them, I use them for speculation or I am waiting for it to collapse – and this is one of the most important basis of the system of contemporary domination”, explain activists.
Okupied social centres in Madrid, today
For the journalist Jacobo Rivero, okupation in Madrid is going through a positive period. “There are many social centres, very different and also many experiences that claim allegiance to the tradition of the okupation movement that appeared in the 1980s. Moreover, the impulse produced by the struggles for the right to a home, against speculation and against evictions in the last years, promotes a movement that until recently was seen as distant from the average citizen and which today, in the context of ‘regime crisis’, is much more socially accepted. And this is good because okupation becomes a recognised political and cultural actor in many of the territories of the Madrid Community”.
Gonzalo Gárate Prieto, of El Patio Maravillas, agrees with this interpretation, even though he qualifies it by saying that “another question would be a more qualitative analysis; in this sense it is important not to fall into easy celebrations, for a great deal of work remains to be done for okupations not to be seen as a question that only concerns small numbers of youth groups who are essentially anti-system. In other words, a great deal remains to be traveled to arrive at the point where okupation is seen as a political tool open to anyone”.
Ana Sánchez, who was a part of the Laboratorio, points out that okupation, even though she prefers to use the word in the plural for the different principles that govern them, is defined by its context and that its value flows from this. And Madrid’s could not be more hostile, “a commodified city, indebted, with high levels of inequality and contamination and with an urban model of extraction of the highest profit possible, through a public-private alliance that leaves little room for well-being.” Her evaluation is twofold: “The okupation of spaces is a response to a social necessity in the context of an extremely high cost of living – for homes, for vital and public spaces – but, however, the status of this kind of action, over the course of the years, and through diverse experiences and proposals, in Madrid, has not acquired any significant weight in urban planning or municipal politics: there are no okupations recognised as a social good, there are no, on the basis of their social function, legalised home occupations.” Therefore, according to Sánchez, “the accumulated experience that is produced around the phenomenon of okupations, and especially in social centres, or the more or less ephemeral or long lasting experience of different initiatives, condenses a social wealth that can serve to give value to the current situation: an activist reality that makes the city a little more inhabitable, that poses questions about the meaning of the public and the private, that permits new models of social cooperation … So, even as resistance, okupation is a breath of fresh air in a city asphyxiated by speculation. In this sense, the evaluation is different: from the experience itself, from self-organisation, a process has been initiated – taking on various forms – in these last years – even though with ups and downs – in which the okupations have been social laboratories generating critical culture and thus social wealth.”
The break with the stigma
The explosion of the dramatic social consequences of the neoliberal politics of the last few years, with the loss of homes for thousands of families as a consequence, has given rise to a climate in which the general perception of okupations is not what it was some decades ago. The re-politicisation in the wake of 15M has contributed to this change of perspective. “Confronting the system with its own contradictions has made it possible for the taking of abandoned spaces to be seen as the logical answer to the collapse of the speculative real-estate market. In this sense, the legitimacy of okupations today is far beyond what it was thirty years ago. People begin to see that it is something increasingly normal that abandoned buildings are taken so that different activities may be realised”, according to Gárate Prieto.
In the Oficina de Vivienda of Madrid, they refer to empathy as the explanation for this change. “The very reality of the crisis has made it such that people put themselves in the place of others who lose their homes; to lose one’s home is no longer something that happens to ‘somebody else’, to ‘marginal’ people. And when loosing one’s home becomes a close possibility, it is easier to think that you prefer a kick to the door than to find yourself in the streets; that if you see yourself in the streets, you would also resist. The discourse of ‘this couldn’t happen to me’ is shattered, replaced by ‘I would also do it’, and herein lies a transforming potential that is very great.” “The generalisation of these situations expands possibilities in relation to house okupations in society. That is, those more and more effected by the crisis are ever closer to this reality. It also broadens horizons with respect to the empty housing stock and the political inactivity in response – in one or the other direction – as well as increasing surely, by contrast – the alarm, for power, of this practice, the proof of which can be seen in the hardening of fines and punishments for this kind of action”, according to the opinion of someone who was an integral part of the Laboratorio.
For his part, Rivero points to the reality generated by the media and its turning over by society. The chain of transmitter-message-receiver has been altered and the message that they diffuse regarding okupations questioned: “In the beginning, the media would speak of unknown experiences for the society and in a stereotypical manner as something having to do with ‘anti-social punks’. Today that view is no longer credible, with a critical certain independence and reasonableness being attributed to people not directly familiar with the experience of constructing social centres. It is the protagonists who must interpret events, to avoid unrealistic accounts of the same.”
This communication’s strategy, originating in the movements themselves and capable of permeating the discourse of the large media, has given rise to a greater knowledge. “Today people know that there are different types of okupations: that there are families who okupy houses because of their situation of poverty, in some cases after having been evicted, they are pushed to it; that social centres are okupied for cultural and political activities, or that there are people in situations of extreme exclusion/poverty/vulnerability and with addiction problems who okupy so as not to sleep in the street”, according to Gárate Prieto.
Can the ballot box change something?
The horizon of okupations in Madrid will be determined by the politics of the city. For this reason, the irruption of Ahora Madrid(1)and of Podemosin the upcoming municipal and regional elections of the 24th of May may be a key moment in the relation between institutions, territorial management, urban politics and social movements. What changes may be possible with these dynamics?
Rivero: “I don’t believe that the social centres, or the okupation movement, have to have a direct relation with government. Another thing are persons who come from these movements, which appears to me wonderful, but it is not new, it has already happened in Germany and Italy. There should be laws which prevent apartments and buildings from becoming the object of speculation, and in this sense it would be positive if the abandonment of buildings were penalised, so that their use is not limited to their revalorisation on the market. There should be measures taken that preserve and protect buildings of historical value, that perhaps can be used as social centres. However, I don’t believe that there should be a special law for okupations. One should expect nothing; processes should be constructed and consolidated. Social centres can also be institutions, but from below, originating in local territories; and it is for the social centres themselves to gain their validation in society, or their own space. It is obvious that we are in a moment where many changes can happen, and I hope that this is the case, and that the social centres from their locations accompany the social empowerment that has been generated these last years beyond their strong identities and hyper-ideologicisation. Social centres, community urban gardens, consumer groups, etc., are tools for the construction of social autonomy that have their proper playing field. As for what happens above, if it respects these processes and this autonomy, it will be welcome.”
Gárate Prieto: “What is fundamental is that the movements maintain their own agenda, that they not wait to be saved by institutions, but that they pressure these last so that they at least hold to their promises. It does not seem to be a good idea for the movements to develop a dependence on resources that may originate in the institutions; in my opinion what is important is that the institutions allow things to be done, that they not create obstacles on the path, that they not seek to swallow up grass roots initiatives. Different European cities, with perhaps Amsterdam and Berlin as the most paradigmatic examples, have followed very long paths from which we can learn from their errors and their successes. Such cities have valorised the cultural capital generated from self-managed spaces; in some cases, they have simply consumed them, in others, repressed them, and in still other cases, there has been a full recognition of the autonomous movements as political subjects, which has in turn permitted the complete self-management of the centres, after the satisfaction of certain safety measures such as emergency exits; something that has allowed the development of activities without threat to those who participate.
Ana Sánchez: “I am afraid that I am not so optimistic as to think that the results of the 24th of May elections will so so upset matters at the level of representation that it will be possible to approach the question of okupied social spaces as a theme on the municipal agenda. Any result however that breaks with the current ignominious political hegemony opens up possibilities to think new forms of confronting urban problems. This is, at best, what we can hope for from Ahora Madrid in the city and from Podemos at the regional level; but not only hope for, but demand, for this is what is at stake: a change that will allow us to demand of those who exercise public office that they give their attention to those issues to which the citizenry accords the greatest urgency, as not only what is necessary, but also desired. The greatest challenge, as far as I can see, is to change in Madrid (and I would say in the entire country) the subjective relation that one has with homes, urban space and property in general: as long as we do not assume the common good as the basic principle of collective existence (and accordingly political policies fomented by it) it will be difficult to normalise practices that are opposed to the so extensive idea of houses as something to accumulate or profit from, and of the urban space in general as a private good for business.”
Oficina de Vivienda of Madrid: “We believe that the results can significantly affect matters. If in government, the same political parties continue, there will not be any significant changes. The strategy that will be followed will be the repression and persecution of anyone who questions that the city does not belong to those who move the machinery of domination, but to those who inhabit it. The repression and the penalties for okupying may even increase; everything depends on the needs of capital, which may increase the margins of profit from houses. If other political parties, with different proposals, assume power, we will surely face different scenarios. One may be that they simply leave the okupations alone,that they turn a blind eye and don’t employ a great deal of force when the moment of eviction comes. Another possibility of course may be the assimilation of the movement, of its integration in the system.”
1. Ahora Madrid is one numerous initiatives that have appeared in spain, in the wake of 15M, which could be very loosely described as examples of citizen or libertarian municipalism, a kind of city based Podemos, even though the initiatives are very often quite distinct. In Barcelona, for example, the movement originally known as Guanyem Barcelona, today goes under the name of Barcelona en Comú. Our own views regarding such forms of municipal politics have been expressed elsewhere (click here)
____________________
Last Saturday (o9/o5/2015), Oficina de Vivienda of Madrid organised a tour around different buildings that were okupied in the neighbourhood of Lavapiés throughout the history of the movement … stories of their destruction, re-appropriation, but also continuity in the memory-practices of those who continue to struggle to remove space from the circuit of commodities …
For a general documentary of Madrid okupied social centres, covering the period 2009-10, and of which there are today some eighty, see the documentary by Christopher Patz, Okupación …
Thirty years okupying Madrid
We publish below a translation of an article that appeared in the Madrid based Periódico Diagonal (07/05/2015), celebrating thirty years of okupations in the city. If okupations are central to any anti-capitalist politics, they are equally haunted by risks and dangers associated with compromising with public authorities, commercialisation, when not simply outright repression. The situation is rendered even more complicated when seemingly new radical political parties appear on stage, such as Syriza in greece, or Podemos in spain, parties that promise some kind of recognition, or at least acceptance. The article below touches, however modestly, on these issues. More importantly, it reminds us of the crucial role of okupations in the making of radical subjectivities.
The okupation of number 38 of Amparo Street, in the neighbourhood of Lavapiés, lasted a mere ten days in November of 1985, but its memory remains alive for its significance. It was the first in Madrid, following experiences in Catalonia and the Basque country, that proposed the idea of a critical and self-managed social centre that denounced real-estate speculation through direct action: to appropriate an empty building with the intention of opening it up to the neighbourhood. The first okupation with a k.
Minuesa, David Castilla, La Guindalera, La Eskalera Karakola, La Nevera or the different incarnations of the Laboratorio are a few of the projects that followed and that were able to give body to this seed and grant a use value to something that was left intentionally empty so as to gain exchange value.
Thirty years after 83 Amparo, the history of Madrid’s okupied social centres continues from the margins of a city devastated by the political influence of construction companies and a model of urbanism characterised more by clientalism and the ruthless search for wealth and power rather than the satisfaction of the needs of its inhabitants. El Patio Maravillas, that has operated in Malasaña since 2007, has announced that it will take a municipal space before the elections of the 24th of May as a response to the order of precautionary eviction that has weighed upon it since February and because of the absence of any response from the city government.
During the whole of this week, the Madrid collective Oficina de Vivienda has organised actions to commemorate the thirty years and to emphasise the relevance of the movement today. “Even though it last but a few hours, each okupation is important because it presupposes an attack on what could be called the waterline of the system that rests upon two basic pillars, private property and the laws which protect it. Okupation does not question possession – this house is mine because I am using it – but property – this house is mine even though I have dozens of them, I use them for speculation or I am waiting for it to collapse – and this is one of the most important basis of the system of contemporary domination”, explain activists.
Okupied social centres in Madrid, today
For the journalist Jacobo Rivero, okupation in Madrid is going through a positive period. “There are many social centres, very different and also many experiences that claim allegiance to the tradition of the okupation movement that appeared in the 1980s. Moreover, the impulse produced by the struggles for the right to a home, against speculation and against evictions in the last years, promotes a movement that until recently was seen as distant from the average citizen and which today, in the context of ‘regime crisis’, is much more socially accepted. And this is good because okupation becomes a recognised political and cultural actor in many of the territories of the Madrid Community”.
Gonzalo Gárate Prieto, of El Patio Maravillas, agrees with this interpretation, even though he qualifies it by saying that “another question would be a more qualitative analysis; in this sense it is important not to fall into easy celebrations, for a great deal of work remains to be done for okupations not to be seen as a question that only concerns small numbers of youth groups who are essentially anti-system. In other words, a great deal remains to be traveled to arrive at the point where okupation is seen as a political tool open to anyone”.
Ana Sánchez, who was a part of the Laboratorio, points out that okupation, even though she prefers to use the word in the plural for the different principles that govern them, is defined by its context and that its value flows from this. And Madrid’s could not be more hostile, “a commodified city, indebted, with high levels of inequality and contamination and with an urban model of extraction of the highest profit possible, through a public-private alliance that leaves little room for well-being.” Her evaluation is twofold: “The okupation of spaces is a response to a social necessity in the context of an extremely high cost of living – for homes, for vital and public spaces – but, however, the status of this kind of action, over the course of the years, and through diverse experiences and proposals, in Madrid, has not acquired any significant weight in urban planning or municipal politics: there are no okupations recognised as a social good, there are no, on the basis of their social function, legalised home occupations.” Therefore, according to Sánchez, “the accumulated experience that is produced around the phenomenon of okupations, and especially in social centres, or the more or less ephemeral or long lasting experience of different initiatives, condenses a social wealth that can serve to give value to the current situation: an activist reality that makes the city a little more inhabitable, that poses questions about the meaning of the public and the private, that permits new models of social cooperation … So, even as resistance, okupation is a breath of fresh air in a city asphyxiated by speculation. In this sense, the evaluation is different: from the experience itself, from self-organisation, a process has been initiated – taking on various forms – in these last years – even though with ups and downs – in which the okupations have been social laboratories generating critical culture and thus social wealth.”
The break with the stigma
The explosion of the dramatic social consequences of the neoliberal politics of the last few years, with the loss of homes for thousands of families as a consequence, has given rise to a climate in which the general perception of okupations is not what it was some decades ago. The re-politicisation in the wake of 15M has contributed to this change of perspective. “Confronting the system with its own contradictions has made it possible for the taking of abandoned spaces to be seen as the logical answer to the collapse of the speculative real-estate market. In this sense, the legitimacy of okupations today is far beyond what it was thirty years ago. People begin to see that it is something increasingly normal that abandoned buildings are taken so that different activities may be realised”, according to Gárate Prieto.
In the Oficina de Vivienda of Madrid, they refer to empathy as the explanation for this change. “The very reality of the crisis has made it such that people put themselves in the place of others who lose their homes; to lose one’s home is no longer something that happens to ‘somebody else’, to ‘marginal’ people. And when loosing one’s home becomes a close possibility, it is easier to think that you prefer a kick to the door than to find yourself in the streets; that if you see yourself in the streets, you would also resist. The discourse of ‘this couldn’t happen to me’ is shattered, replaced by ‘I would also do it’, and herein lies a transforming potential that is very great.” “The generalisation of these situations expands possibilities in relation to house okupations in society. That is, those more and more effected by the crisis are ever closer to this reality. It also broadens horizons with respect to the empty housing stock and the political inactivity in response – in one or the other direction – as well as increasing surely, by contrast – the alarm, for power, of this practice, the proof of which can be seen in the hardening of fines and punishments for this kind of action”, according to the opinion of someone who was an integral part of the Laboratorio.
For his part, Rivero points to the reality generated by the media and its turning over by society. The chain of transmitter-message-receiver has been altered and the message that they diffuse regarding okupations questioned: “In the beginning, the media would speak of unknown experiences for the society and in a stereotypical manner as something having to do with ‘anti-social punks’. Today that view is no longer credible, with a critical certain independence and reasonableness being attributed to people not directly familiar with the experience of constructing social centres. It is the protagonists who must interpret events, to avoid unrealistic accounts of the same.”
This communication’s strategy, originating in the movements themselves and capable of permeating the discourse of the large media, has given rise to a greater knowledge. “Today people know that there are different types of okupations: that there are families who okupy houses because of their situation of poverty, in some cases after having been evicted, they are pushed to it; that social centres are okupied for cultural and political activities, or that there are people in situations of extreme exclusion/poverty/vulnerability and with addiction problems who okupy so as not to sleep in the street”, according to Gárate Prieto.
Can the ballot box change something?
The horizon of okupations in Madrid will be determined by the politics of the city. For this reason, the irruption of Ahora Madrid (1) and of Podemos in the upcoming municipal and regional elections of the 24th of May may be a key moment in the relation between institutions, territorial management, urban politics and social movements. What changes may be possible with these dynamics?
Rivero: “I don’t believe that the social centres, or the okupation movement, have to have a direct relation with government. Another thing are persons who come from these movements, which appears to me wonderful, but it is not new, it has already happened in Germany and Italy. There should be laws which prevent apartments and buildings from becoming the object of speculation, and in this sense it would be positive if the abandonment of buildings were penalised, so that their use is not limited to their revalorisation on the market. There should be measures taken that preserve and protect buildings of historical value, that perhaps can be used as social centres. However, I don’t believe that there should be a special law for okupations. One should expect nothing; processes should be constructed and consolidated. Social centres can also be institutions, but from below, originating in local territories; and it is for the social centres themselves to gain their validation in society, or their own space. It is obvious that we are in a moment where many changes can happen, and I hope that this is the case, and that the social centres from their locations accompany the social empowerment that has been generated these last years beyond their strong identities and hyper-ideologicisation. Social centres, community urban gardens, consumer groups, etc., are tools for the construction of social autonomy that have their proper playing field. As for what happens above, if it respects these processes and this autonomy, it will be welcome.”
Gárate Prieto: “What is fundamental is that the movements maintain their own agenda, that they not wait to be saved by institutions, but that they pressure these last so that they at least hold to their promises. It does not seem to be a good idea for the movements to develop a dependence on resources that may originate in the institutions; in my opinion what is important is that the institutions allow things to be done, that they not create obstacles on the path, that they not seek to swallow up grass roots initiatives. Different European cities, with perhaps Amsterdam and Berlin as the most paradigmatic examples, have followed very long paths from which we can learn from their errors and their successes. Such cities have valorised the cultural capital generated from self-managed spaces; in some cases, they have simply consumed them, in others, repressed them, and in still other cases, there has been a full recognition of the autonomous movements as political subjects, which has in turn permitted the complete self-management of the centres, after the satisfaction of certain safety measures such as emergency exits; something that has allowed the development of activities without threat to those who participate.
Ana Sánchez: “I am afraid that I am not so optimistic as to think that the results of the 24th of May elections will so so upset matters at the level of representation that it will be possible to approach the question of okupied social spaces as a theme on the municipal agenda. Any result however that breaks with the current ignominious political hegemony opens up possibilities to think new forms of confronting urban problems. This is, at best, what we can hope for from Ahora Madrid in the city and from Podemos at the regional level; but not only hope for, but demand, for this is what is at stake: a change that will allow us to demand of those who exercise public office that they give their attention to those issues to which the citizenry accords the greatest urgency, as not only what is necessary, but also desired. The greatest challenge, as far as I can see, is to change in Madrid (and I would say in the entire country) the subjective relation that one has with homes, urban space and property in general: as long as we do not assume the common good as the basic principle of collective existence (and accordingly political policies fomented by it) it will be difficult to normalise practices that are opposed to the so extensive idea of houses as something to accumulate or profit from, and of the urban space in general as a private good for business.”
Oficina de Vivienda of Madrid: “We believe that the results can significantly affect matters. If in government, the same political parties continue, there will not be any significant changes. The strategy that will be followed will be the repression and persecution of anyone who questions that the city does not belong to those who move the machinery of domination, but to those who inhabit it. The repression and the penalties for okupying may even increase; everything depends on the needs of capital, which may increase the margins of profit from houses. If other political parties, with different proposals, assume power, we will surely face different scenarios. One may be that they simply leave the okupations alone,that they turn a blind eye and don’t employ a great deal of force when the moment of eviction comes. Another possibility of course may be the assimilation of the movement, of its integration in the system.”
1. Ahora Madrid is one numerous initiatives that have appeared in spain, in the wake of 15M, which could be very loosely described as examples of citizen or libertarian municipalism, a kind of city based Podemos, even though the initiatives are very often quite distinct. In Barcelona, for example, the movement originally known as Guanyem Barcelona, today goes under the name of Barcelona en Comú. Our own views regarding such forms of municipal politics have been expressed elsewhere (click here)
____________________
Last Saturday (o9/o5/2015), Oficina de Vivienda of Madrid organised a tour around different buildings that were okupied in the neighbourhood of Lavapiés throughout the history of the movement … stories of their destruction, re-appropriation, but also continuity in the memory-practices of those who continue to struggle to remove space from the circuit of commodities …
For a general documentary of Madrid okupied social centres, covering the period 2009-10, and of which there are today some eighty, see the documentary by Christopher Patz, Okupación …