Squatting in Vilafranca del Penedès

If global warm­ing is likely to be the biggest prob­lem fac­ing so­ci­ety in the com­ing years, it will cer­tainly be com­pet­ing with hous­ing as an issue of great pub­lic con­cern. While the sit­u­a­tion is prob­a­bly most se­vere in Barcelona, the peo­ple of a medium-sized Cata­lan town such as Vi­lafranca del Penedès are cer­tainly not free from these pres­sures.

One group who have acted against what they see as a major cause of hous­ing dif­fi­cul­ties is a squat­ter's col­lec­tive that sup­ports the pol­i­tics of the Es­querra In­de­pen­den­tista [in­de­pen­dent left] move­ment. Re­cently, they took oc­cu­pa­tion of a for­mer in­dus­trial build­ing in the north of Vi­lafranca and have re-named it “El Taller” (The Work­shop).

“We have done this to protest against real es­tate spec­u­la­tion,” says their 21-year-old spokesman, who did not wish to be named or pho­tographed. “But we also want to do pro­duc­tive things with this place. We are con­vert­ing it into some­where for peo­ple to meet to dis­cuss pol­i­tics, to drink cof­fee, and to have con­certs and the­atre per­for­mances. We are even cre­at­ing a stu­dio up­stairs.”

Ac­cord­ing to the col­lec­tive, the site they have taken over has been empty for at least four years, and is zoned to be even­tu­ally knocked down for re­de­vel­op­ment.

“The local peo­ple were happy when we moved in be­cause there was a lot of rub­bish lying around the build­ing and no one was clean­ing it up. But we did,” says their spokesman. “We're mak­ing some­thing good out of a place that had no owner and we are doing it with­out any help from the Vi­lafranca town coun­cil. It was dif­fi­cult to get this all hap­pen­ing but we will stay here.”

In a very dif­fer­ent po­si­tion to those who oc­cupy va­cant build­ings are Vi­lafranca res­i­dents, Teresa and Jose. They have a rural prop­erty out­side the town that is being lived in by a man with­out their per­mis­sion. The cou­ple have tried to avoid legal pro­ceed­ings with the squat­ter for sev­eral years but have re­cently changed their ap­proach of at­tempts at per­sua­sion and con­cil­i­a­tion.

“We were told we needed a judge's order to get him out of our house,” Teresa ex­plains. “Our de­ci­sion was to hire a pri­vate lawyer be­cause using a pub­lic one takes much more time.”

“The pro­ce­dure has taken two months to get to court and has cost us two thou­sand euros, but at the mo­ment he's still there and he has smashed up half the house,” says Jose.

Speak­ing to some other peo­ple over lunch in Vi­lafranca, it is not dif­fi­cult to find a com­mon theme. There seems to be an ac­cep­tance that the gov­ern­ment could not or would not do much to solve prob­lems re­lat­ing to hous­ing. Apart from one sug­ges­tion that taxes should be re­duced on houses, there is lit­tle gen­uine hope that im­prove­ments were pos­si­ble com­ing from elected rep­re­sen­ta­tives.

“The in­tro­duc­tion of the euro was what started our strug­gles,” says Sil­via. “And the price of houses is the other bur­den. We pay more than dou­ble com­pared to those in south­ern Spain. The mid­dle class has shrunk com­pletely. Every­thing needs to be changed!”

With­out know­ing it, an­other woman also agrees with the squat­ters col­lec­tive on the sub­ject of prof­i­teer­ing in the real es­tate in­dus­try. She sug­gests that the high lev­els of spec­u­la­tion now means that for sin­gle peo­ple it is im­pos­si­ble to buy a house or even rent a de­cent apart­ment.

“Every­one must live with their par­ents or share ac­com­mo­da­tion with at least one other per­son if they are to af­ford to have any qual­ity of life,” she ar­gues.

There is some­thing here that is be­yond dis­pute, though. Al­most any­one would see the com­mon sense in a group of en­er­getic and op­ti­mistic young peo­ple mak­ing good use of a long-aban­doned build­ing, as with the Vi­lafranca squat­ters group. How­ever, the ques­tion that does re­main is: How should this hap­pen, both legally and eth­i­cally?