Last Monday, the Catalan riot police (Mossos d’Esquadra) evicted El Banc Expropriat, a long-running squat and neighbourhood hub in the Gracia area of Barcelona. Demos and street clashes have continued all week (the latest going on as we write today) as thousands of people try to retake the building, which is now guarded by welded steel shutters and several hundred robocops. El Banc Expropriat of Gracia is the longest standing and best known of several former banks occupied in Barcelona since the financial crisis, and has become a focal point of local resistance and struggle.
In May 2014, the eviction of Can Vies squat in the Sants area led to a week of rioting into the city centre, and a massive show of support from the neighbourhoods and beyond, causing the city government to back down and return the building to the people. Fearing a repeat of this rebellion, the then mayor of Xavier Trias made a behind-the-scenes deal with the owner of the Banc Expropriat building (a property speculator called Manuel Bravo Solano) in which the City Council paid up 5000 euros a month in rent.
One year ago, Dias was replaced as mayor by Ada Colau of the new “Barcelona en Comú” party, an electoral project which emerged from the grassroots movements growing in Barcelona and other cities following the crisis. “People’s mayor” Colau is herself a well-known housing activist, anti-eviction campaigner and darling of the radical left. Colau ended the secret rent payments on the Banc Expropriat and, when the owners then called in the Mossos to evict, declared the eviction a “private matter” out of her hands. She has also made statements condemning “violence” from people defending the social centre. Colau offered to arrange an alternative state-approved building, to which the Banc Expropriat responds:
“We do not want another space, we want this one, where it is, with its neighbors. El Banc is ours because we have constructed it second by second with all the people that has passed by and have made it vibrate with hundreds of different experiences; El Banc is ours and we will defend it until the end.”
The eviction of El Banc Expropriat came less than 3 weeks after the Barcelona authorities also evicted the migrant solidarity squat El Mukkhayam. And on the very same day as those other friendly humanitarian leftists Syriza evicted Europe’s largest refugee camp in Idomeni, northern Greece.
Here is a very brief timeline of events so far this week. We repost below some translated communiques from El Banc Expropriat with much more detail. For more info and updates see the Banc Expropriat website (in Catalan) and Squat.net for English translations.
Monday 23 May. Banc Expropriat evicted by riot cops in 10 hour operation. A demo was called for 8pm in the evening. Up to 2000 people came out in the evening, but the building was surrounded and guarded by robocops. Banks and other institutions of capitalist violence were smashed. In clashes that night, some 15 people are injured including rubber bullet wounds to the head.
Tuesday 24 May. Second night of demonstration and street fighting. Demonstrators managed this time to get to the building, get through the steel shutters and temporarily reoccupy. But then they were beaten back again by charges of the Mossos, in which another 19 people were injured. Around the neighbourhood, people also showed support by banging pots and pans from the balconies.
Wednesday 25 May. Third night of demonstration and street fighting. Again, the demo met at 8PM in Revolution Square and again attempted to re-take the bank. Again, they were beaten back by hundreds of Mossos who used baton charges, van charges, and rubber bullets amongst other tactics.
Sunday 29 May. Daytime demonstration now happening.
Statement No 1, 24 May. WE WILL RETURN TO EL BANC
Yesterday, May 23th, El Banc Expropiat was evicted by the Catalan police, after more than 160 days of resistance (more than 100 during the first campaign, and 87 days this time). The first time, the City Hall secretly decided to pay over 65.000EUR to Manuel Bravo Solano, who owns the bank, in order to avoid another Can Vies before the municipal elections. After this shady deal was exposed, the City Hall justified itself saying that they believed that the Banc had an important “social” role. They then admitted that this rent was being paid to avoid breaking the social peace, because they knew that the eviction of El Banc would imply all sorts of responses. This is what finally happened yesterday. First of all, we would like to thank all the solidarity that we have received, a solidarity which has taken many different forms and that has also meant a form of support to all the other struggles which are currently taking place.
Yesterday’s outburst of rage is not only due to El Banc, it is a consequence of recent arrests, of raids on squats and libertarian spaces, of the assassination of Juan Andrés Benítez that exposed police impunity.
We understand that some neighbours are annoyed because of the situation that the neighbourhood is going through, or the physical damages that might have suffered. But, as we’ve said many times, we will defend the Banc in every single way we can.
Anyone who has seen the police interventions can attest the violence that they have produced. Over 50 people have ended up with broken heads, knees, hands or arms as a result of their actions. This is another reason to stay where we are and try to get back to the Banc.
We will return to the Banc.
Solidarity actions can be sent to elbanc [at] riseup [dot] net or to the squat’s page “With Love“
Statement No 2, 26 May.
[May26] These days are being very intense and this is why we’re having difficulties to spread informations as a collective. Within our capacities, we will add more detail to our version of the facts of these last few days and also our opinion on many aspects of the conflict that is taking place.
First of all, we would like to thank all the people that moved from solidarity to explicit engagement with the project of El Banc Expropiat.
Many of you are asking in which ways they can contribute to this struggle, ranging from neighbours of Gràcia that are getting in touch with us to people from elsewhere, sometimes writing from places so far away as the combative neighbourhood of Gamonal, in Burgos.
Here’s some ideas for you:
- Convoke all sorts of protests that could pressure those responsible of this conflict, grant more visibility to what El Banc Expropiat is or to what is happening these last few days in Vila de Gràcia.
- Hang banderoles, banners, or posters to your balconies or windows in support to El Banc Expropiat.
- Spread the information we publish with your nearest relational circles.
- Participate in the pot-banging actions that are taking place are 22h from your balcony, your window or the nearest square.
- Send us all the informations, images and videos that you consider that could be useful to us.
Who is behind this eviction?
- Catalunya Caixa: this bailed-out bank (now absorbed by BBVA) was the owner of the space when we squatted it. If they hadn’t started the legal process to evict us, we probably would not be here today.
- Manuel Bravo Solano: this individual is the responsible behind the current obscure network of real estate companies dedicated to speculation that legally own the space. Companies like this and people like him are responsible of the gentrification process that we are suffering in Gràcia.
- Mossos d’Esquadra: we won’t be fooled, the violent interventions of the police are not being a response to the violent actions of the people that are protesting. It became self-evident the second day that the goal of the police is not to prevent disturbances, but instead to prevent us from re-opening El Banc Expropiat. When we manage to enter our space it it will become obvious that the disturbances are taking place because of the eviction and the later interventions by the Mossos d’Esquadra.
- Government of the Generalitat: The Government of Junts pel Sí (CDC and ERC) are the political responsibles that command the Mossos d’Esquadra. Of the Government of the Generalitat wanted to, the police would walk away, and if they do we will be able to re-open El Banc Expropiat.
- Media: These actors would not have the strength they have if the media wasn’t acting as a amplifier of their messages. The media manipulation of these last few days is becoming quite obvious, not only because some old footages of disturbances were used, or the desperate attempt of the journalists to find neighbours who talk badly about El Banc Expropiat, but also because of the complete silencing of police violence, notwithstanding the images, videos and testimonies that circulate through social networks in very significant terms. The fact that we don’t do press conferences doesn’t mean that the press does not have access to the huge amount of information that refutes many of the lies that individuals such as Batlle or Collboni [local TV journalists] are spreading.
Each of these actors have their share of responsibility in the conflict that we are suffering, and for this reason we invite everyone to make their role visible and to pressure them to change their attitude.
Stay tuned for more information
May 26th of 2016
Vila de Gràcia
https://bancexpropiatgracia.wordpress.com/
Statement No 3, 27 May. We’ll try to enter again.
Whatever might be said by the City Council about this conflict, it does not take place between private parts, it is a conflict between two ways of living: those who want a common life and to relate through mutual support networks, produced among equals, and those who defend private property – regardless of its use – and the supremacy of some over others.
Barcelona en Comú is not and will not be a representative of those of us who have been here these days, first because we do not have representatives – and simultaneously do not aspire to represent anyone but ourselves – and secondly because their institutional choice is not and will not be our’s neither. We refuse to serve as an excuse for the various political parties, that have been throwing electioneering darts between themselves, while spreading lies about us. We have never negotiated with no one, regardless of the untruths spread by politicians: those who signed a contract to maintain social peace – CiU –, paid over €65,000 of an unjustified fund to the well-known speculator Bravo Manuel Solano, an amount that almost fully covers for the buying cost paid by him for our space.
They justify this contract by appealing to our alleged social work, trying to build a distinction between the Bank and other occupied spaces, but do not be mistaken: we are the same people. We do not do social and humanitarian work, what we strive for is the generation of networks of mutual support and the creation of a world exterior to the mercantile logic. We do not want to cover up the holes of misery that capitalism created, we want to put an end to them. And, to achieve this, all tools are valid and necessary.
Those that are weaving networks, those that retrieve houses for those who suffer evictions, those that occupy to create homes and meeting spaces, those that make parties and other activities to pay all the costs of judicial repression, those that cut off streets so that popular protests can advance, those that face up to the police: we are all the same because these are different paths of a common struggle.
There has been a lot of talking about violence, our’s to be more precise, but whoever pretends to criticize all forms of violence is refusing to recognize that this society is impregnated with violence in its very foundations: the violence that occurs over evictions, the violence of the homicidal Mossos that remain unpunished, the violence of the persecution of street-sellers and of the rejection of refugees, but also the violence that, beneath the unquestionable excuse of anti-terrorism, shatters the doors of our homes at five in the morning, and kidnaps our companions. If someone really wants to talk about violence, let’s talk about it, but basing ourselves on the fact that if the inequalities of this society do not disappear, it’s because there is an organization specialized in acting violently in order to maintain them. This organization is called the police, whatever the country, the color of its uniform, or the government who commands it.
The police is the visible and explicit part of this structural violence. But this violence can also be found in blackmailing in the workplace, when we accept to be humiliated and robed out of fear of misery; it can be found – as we already noted – in foreclosures, when home ownership is more important than the necessity of a roof; it is found in the sexism that denies the feminicide that is taking place; it takes place in this Europe that turns its back on the refugees of the wars that were caused by our own countries. This capitalist society is based on violence, any serious discussion must start from this premise.
The conflict over El Banc Expropiat, that is taking place in the streets, has begun when we got evicted, and it will finish once we get back in. We have nothing to negotiate because we do not aspire to anything else than reopening the Banc Expropriat at the same location where it always has been; if they want to negotiate, they can do it among themselves, Generalitat, City Council and Solano Bravo. It is not our problem. We do not want another space, we want this one, where it is, with its neighbors. El Banc is ours because we have constructed it second by second with all the people that has passed by and have made it vibrate with hundreds of different experiences; El Banc is ours and we will defend it until the end.
It’s quite simple: the only solution to the conflict they have opened is to let us back in.
May 27, 2016
Vila de Gràcia
https://bancexpropiatgracia.wordpress.com/