“They will leave if you give up two floors for social rent” | Catalonia

Chaos was his ally. On the afternoon of October 18, 2019, while Barcelona burned due to protests against the ruling of the process, a group of young people accessed the roof of number 56 of the Ronda de Sant Pere. Hooded, with the help of ropes and harnesses, they descended the facade, oblivious to the smell of the burned containers and the flying of the cobblestones thrown at the police. A tenant on the third floor, about to be evicted for not paying the rent, gave them access. The young people occupied four floors under construction. The theft alarms went off and the owner, Josep Maria D., alerted the Mossos. “They told me they couldn’t go because of what was happening on the street,” he later declared.

Two days later, the police came to the farm to evict the squatters. Paula C. introduced herself as a representative and spokesperson for the Casco Antiguo Housing Union, a heterogeneous and informal group – not registered as an association or as a union – that defends the right to housing in a way that has drawn the attention of the Mossos and a judge from Barcelona. The agents verified how the occupants placed furniture behind the doors to prevent them from entering and how, after some calls, more than 200 people concentrated on the Sant Pere ring road. There were clashes and the eviction was suspended. Paula addressed the owner: “I know who you are and I know where you live.”

“From that day on, it was a constant nightmare,” says Josep Maria D. The union harassed him on the street and on the networks. Graffiti appeared in front of the building (“be a speculator”), in his city (Vic) and next to the pharmacies run by his children. On Twitter, the collective land indicated with name and surname and accused him of sending “thugs” to expel the squatters.

On February 6, 2020, three union members met with the owner’s attorney to “negotiate.” The meeting was recorded by the lawyer and is the basis of a complaint against the Casco Antiguo Housing Union for coercion, extortion, threats and criminal organization. The head of the court of instruction number 1 of Barcelona, ​​Joaquín Aguirre, opened proceedings and entrusted the case – still in its initial phase – to the Civil Guard.

The conversation, whose content EL PAÍS has accessed, takes place in a cafeteria. They ask: a coffee, a sparkling water, an American coffee. For the lawyer, nothing. The lawyer’s proposal for a financial settlement to end the occupations has no effect. “This is a political movement. His goal would be to get families in the neighborhood and get a social rent. And surely they would be willing to leave ”, explains Adrià, who claims to be responsible for communication. They accuse Josep Maria of being a “speculator” for “dividing the flats” to charge more for rents. But they open up to “negotiate” and stop the smear campaign. “I do not know how we would do so that these things did not happen, but we would try.”

The lawyer announces that the court will agree with them and they will recover the properties, as has happened: one of the occupants has been convicted of a minor crime of usurpation; the floors have been abandoned. They reply that “the housing movement is very strong in the city” and they issue the warning: “If, as you say, this has to go long, the resistance will go long as well. Here everyone will play their cards ”.

The boys raise their demand: “Two social rental flats, those that are already divided, on the first floor.” They assure that the union knows “families in different situations” and that, if an agreement is reached, they must think about which ones can be installed. They insist that, for the moment, it is not necessary to “talk about numbers.” And they assure that it is a system that “has already worked in other cases.”

The group seems to have a pool of candidates for social rent parallel to that of the Administration. At the meeting, its members boast of having obtained the support of the Barcelona City Council and propose that it mediate. “He has intervened in other similar cases, in the negotiations.” Asked about their relations with the “housing unions” that have proliferated in Barcelona, ​​the council ensures that it maintains a “dialogue” between the affected families, who are also usually users of municipal services, and the owners to seek alternatives to evictions . And he admits that, “in recent times, many families have been linked to social movements and neighborhood unions.” In five years, the Colau Anti-Eviction Unit has assisted 10,000 families for non-payment of rent, mortgage and even occupancy.

“Political context”

David Aranda, attorney for Paula C. (for now, the only one investigated in the case) believes that the complaint is “disproportionate” because it includes a crime such as criminal organization. He affirms that the owners “try to criminalize” the pro-housing movement by taking it to court when “what there is is a political conflict.” “There is judicial and police pressure in this matter,” he adds. Regarding the conversation in which they demand social floors in exchange for ending the occupation, he maintains that they are “negotiation techniques” in which an attempt is made to launch a “credible threat from a position of weakness.”

Aranda denies that there is a real organization. The “unions”, which have “taken over” from the Platform for People Affected by Mortgages (PAH) act autonomously, each with its own idiosyncrasies and forms of action. A veteran activist agrees that when Ada Colau left the leadership of the PAH to become mayor of Barcelona, ​​the movement suffered “a process of fragmentation.” Thus the neighborhood unions were born, sometimes linked to the orbit of the pro-independence left, which “saw in the house a new formula of political militancy.” These movements run in parallel, for example, with the Sindicat de Llogaters, which is fighting for the regulation of the price of rents.

In addition to the judicial investigation, the Mossos have already shown their concern about the activity of housing unions, especially that of El Raval. On at least three occasions, the agents have detected attempts to occupy or occupy by people linked to unions to transfer them to third parties.

The most striking case occurred on October 1. “A large group of people from the collective Raval Housing Union and from the La Galera house, they tried using violence and intimidation to drive people out of Calle Sant Bartomeu, 6, ”the Mossos described. They wanted several people, also squatters, who lived in an apartment on the block, to leave. One of the defendants stated that “the first intention was to negotiate” a “voluntary eviction since they wanted to illegally relocate other people.” As they were not allowed, they ended up being beaten and pushed. The case fell to the Court of Instruction 6 of Barcelona, ​​which closed the case.

In one of their reports, the Mossos warn of a “new way of acting” of pro-housing groups, using the “pressure of the concentration of a large number of people” to avoid eviction “by carrying out group crimes such as disobedience or the same co-authorship of the occupation that you want to try to avoid ”.

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