At least 126,000 people demonstrated this Saturday in Barcelona to demand a 50% reduction in rents, the establishment of indefinite contracts, the ban on the purchase of homes for speculation, and the recovery of homes for residential use

~ from Directa ~

It had been known for days that this Saturday’s demonstration would be massive. The unitary call promoted by grassroots movements for decent housing, with the support of other organisations from the trade union world or culture, and the streets full of posters announcing the call, showed that the appointment had to become what it has been: a success that has exceeded all expectations. Barcelona has experienced the most important housing demonstration in its recent history.

Under the slogan Let’s lower the rents, thousands of people expressed their displeasure with the real estate situation that the city is experiencing and that is spreading to many other places in the country. In fact, several organisations, already at noon and in the morning, left in columns on foot, by train or by bus from around fifty municipalities and from the different neighbourhoods of the Catalan capital. They joined the great concentration that went from Plaça Universitat de Barcelona to Sants station.

Among the main demands of the demonstration stand out the 50% reduction in rents, the establishment of indefinite contracts, the ban on the purchase of homes for speculation and the recovery of homes for residential use.

Historical demonstration

The demonstration occupied the entire route from Joan Miró Park to Plaça Universitat, which is 63,000 square meters. With at least two demonstrators per square meter, it can be determined based on the perimeter calculation that there were at least 126,000 people at the demonstration. The organisation, in fact, numbers 170,000 participants.

The Urban Guard, for its part, quantified the number of people who filled the streets of Barcelona at 22,000. A downward calculation that contrasts with the conversation that two agents of the Urban Guard had on the radio and that journalists from Directa were been able to hear. When the intersection was already in the Joan Miró park, a policeman who was blocking traffic in the Ronda Sant Antoni was asked over the phone if Carrer d’Aribau could now be opened and he replied exclaiming: “Negative, negative, how can we open if the queue of the demonstration is in front of the university building!”.

Already in the first stages of the demonstration, around five in the afternoon, Carme Arcarazo, spokesperson for the Tenants’ Union, pointed out that we were “in front of the largest housing demonstration in the history of Catalonia”. “A new cycle begins in terms of housing”, he added.

In the same vein, the spokeswoman for the 2nd Housing Congress of Catalonia, Marta Espriu, pointed out that this Saturday “hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets to put on the table that they have to pay every day for having a home is an unsustainable issue”. Likewise, she added that the demonstration does not only appeal to “tenants, but also has to do with the comrades who have been fighting against mortgage foreclosures since 2008, the comrades who are in collectives and networks throughout the Catalan territory and the comrades who have problems with the immigration law and who suffer from institutional racism every day and who not only do not have the right to a home or the right to live as dignified people”. In fact, the demonstration passed by Casa Orsola, one of the emblems of the fight against real estate speculation in the city of Barcelona for years.

Marina Parés, spokeswoman for the Socialist Housing Union of Catalonia, pointed out that Saturday’s demonstration “is the moment of the housing unions” and warned that the mobilisation “cannot be 15M again”. “We can no longer depend on those responsible for this situation who have been building a state and a model of housing that depends on the ingot and the tourist sector that causes a housing of misery”, Parés said.

From a borderline situation to a rent strike

The situation, as analysed by the different spokespersons of the decent rent movements, is limitless. “Right now a rent in Barcelona is minimum wage and young women cannot emancipate ourselves”, said Marina Parés.

In this sense, Arcarazo directed his displeasure towards the country’s political and rentier class. “We’re done having rentiers steal half of our salary, we’re done packing boxes when our contract ends because you’re going to kick us out, we’re done with you getting richer and us getting poorer”, he affirmed. He also said that “flats must be for living and speculative purchases must be prohibited” and that “competent excuses can no longer be used because the Socialist Party governs Barcelona, ​​Catalonia and the state and is responsible of housing policies”.

Espriu has also called on the organisation “of collectives and housing networks from all over the territory to remove housing from the market” and has said that it would be a “long and expensive” fight.