A daily program turned the square into a space for community life, political action, training and meeting
~ Ainhoa Lleida, Directa ~
The rain does not prevent the fourth night of the protest camp for housing and against tourism in Valencia from going ahead. The evening before our phone starts to ring. Waiting on the other side of the line is Natxo, a student of political science, who in a few seconds greets us from a place where he had managed to take refuge from the rain. He talks about the open appeal and appreciates the solidarity on the part of the people who have brought material to take refuge from the water that was planned to stay for a while. They have been camping since the demonstration that took place on Saturday, October 19th, and which gathered around 50,000 people according to the organisation.
“Luckily, it started to rain while it was still daylight,” recounts one of the people present. This allowed five new tents to be set up in a short time, the ones that were already there would be covered with plastic, and the night would be weathered. The centre of the square can be seen from Carrer Correus, where there are some police vans. The officers go from one place to another in the square, monitoring it throughout the day.
The police cars do not obstruct the view. Before arriving at the square, you can see a large, colourful sign that reads: “We have no shelter. For the right to housing”. It is a white canvas that rests on two tents. As you move towards the centre of the square, more banners begin to appear in several rows of shops grouped in circles: “Valencia is not for sale”, “More neighbourhood, less tourism” or “The city for those who live in it”.
It’s been five years since the motto “if we don’t have a house, we’ll occupy the square” became a reality that goes beyond a symbolic statement. “The town hall square is historically the place where we are represented by all the residents of the city, where we can continue to defend the demands we had at the demonstration”, remarks Natxo. Bru is another of the people who has been participating in the camping. For her it is important that “the struggle continues with other types of actions, such as occupying public space”. The reasons for continuing camping remain: for the right to housing and against tourism. “In the end we are fighting for a decent home, which is a universal basic right, many people are being harmed and it is an issue that crosses us in an intergenerational way”, says Bru.
Access to decent housing
Bru is a non-binary trans person. They have been living independently for ten years and during this time they has only been able to reside under occupation. When they have shared a flat, it has always been very precarious due to the high price of rent. As they explain, “it seems that you can only find decent housing if you occupy, are a rich person or your family owns property”, which they consider unfair.
As a trans person, they have had to face a whole series of prejudices that have to do with their way of dressing or their physical appearance, and which have been conditioning at the same time whether or not they were interviewed to rent an apartment. “There are trans people who have a very bad time in terms of housing, who don’t have a house to live in and that access to one is often complicated, and it needs to be made visible”, they conclude.
Karina, another of the attendees at the camp, also denounces the real estate racism she has to face in order to access housing. “My skin colour, my accent, limit my access”, he regrets. In addition, she has not always been able to meet the requirements they ask her to rent, such as more than two payslips or a fixed work contract. In this sense, she says that “the majority of migrants have very precarious and unstable jobs, or jobs in the underground economy”.
The square, centre of political activity
A daily program constitutes the flow of the days and turns the square into a space for community life, political action, training and meeting. All of the city’s political activity has been moved to the square: neighbourhood assemblies, group rehearsals, climate conferences, and even a small library has been set up on loan from the bookstore Arribada Llibres.
Antònia gathered on the first day of camping and from that day she is in charge, together with Benji, of preparing with all the ingredients left by the people who come, what the people who want to eat there will eat. At 2.00 p.m. every day is marked for the popular lunch. The menu is varied, almost always vegan, and the table is an internal assembly to discuss the points that will be discussed hours later in the open.
The camped people look with some suspicion on the political representatives. They have very specific demands in terms of housing, territory or tourism. For example, the regulation of the price of rent, the halting of all evictions, the creation of a decent public housing stock, the halting of the expansion of the port and of all urban planning projects in the city. A ban on granting more tourist licenses for apartments and hotels or declaring Valencia a tense area is also demanded.
So far, the institutional response to the demands has been practically non-existant. The mayor of Valencia, Maria José Català, has only announced that she will not evict the camper as long as “it does not cause any problems”. Likewise, she called for a “great agreement between the administrations” and pointed out that “the best recipe for people to have a home is to build housing”. But, from the movement in defence of housing, they do not consider that more houses should be built, “the protection of the territory is very important and it cannot be that there are thousands of empty flats and so many people on the streets”, they express in a statement.
The camping continued until Sunday 27th of October. But, even though the protest in the square has ended, this will not mean the end of the movement for housing: “we have been working for years and we are going beyond this encampment”, they say. That is why there has been a call to follow the mobilisation in every neighbourhood of the city and to set up assemblies where they are not yet organised.
Photos: Raquel Fontanal
