Destroying Citizen Participation in Madrid: Part 2

Drawing of the demonstration for EVA, by @cuadernista
As I blogged last time, the city of Madrid has been on a revanchist rampage to shutter all the permitted citizen-managed spaces in the city. It started last year, and has not let up. They began with La Gasolinera (@LaGasoli) in 2019, right after they beat Manuela Carmena in the elections for mayor. Manuela’s party, Mas Madrid, was expected to win, but the left split and the right came to power in both the city and the province.
La Gasolinera was an innocuous place, full of parents and kids. But they showed a film that the neighborhood councilman didn’t like, and that Vox man, the ultra-right political party with whom the PP “center right” has allied, demanded the place be closed.
That was the start. There’ve been several evictions since then, like the lovely Solar de Antonio Grilo (see pic of mosaics) @solarantoniogrilo. The next place on the chopping block is Casa de Cultura de Chamberí (@CasaChamberi, @SomosChamberi). That’s a rich neighborhood, so it’s perplexing why the right would want to close a place where the people likely vote for them.
I went to the demo to save the Casa Cultura. It started with a bang – a drum corps beating out the rhythm. A brass band further along the parade played traditional popular songs. Lots of kids, some carrying heart-rendering collaged signs. There was no sign of any political party, no angry placards, and only a couple of people wore t-shirts. (One “bruja” [witch] beating a drum, and another from La Ingobernable 1st anniversary, La Ingob the evicted social center next to the Caixa Forum tourist attraction.)

The apoliticism of the crowd was in itself a plea, albeit useless. They’ve filed a lawsuit to delay the eviction, arguing that the work of social interest should be continued during the pandemic. They cite the neighborhood food pantry (the city doesn’t do that, although some churches do), and the support group for patients from a local mental hospial. There was another demo later at city hall to bang a pan for the food pantries.
The legal route did not work for EVA (#EVAsigue, @evArganzuela). They got the boot anyhow.
More to the point, a group of young people "struggling for a barrio organized, joyful and combative" (Arganzuela 27 @agz27), have broken into an abandoned Santander Bank building to open a new social center.
So the beat goes on….
All of this is rather atypical for a city that has long tolerated a certain level of squatting – it alleviates a housing crisis they have no interest in solving. But this new administration, both in the city and the province level, is especially brutal and uninterested in solving poor and working peoples’ problems. The outlying shantytown Canada Real was without electric power for months last year, a scandal in Europe. Why?

The garden Solar Antonio Grilo before eviction

They were running so many marijuana plantations they caused blackouts, said the shameless politicians. Look at their expensive cars parked outside!, said the unrepentant legislators, as the media showed kids doing homework by cel phone flashlights and mothers gathering wood to burn for heat.
If they can do that why should they care about a bunch of citizen-run spaces that provide, as the Chamberistas wrote, a “meeting point so that from mutual support a social fabric seriously affected by the pandemic crisis could be sustained.”

#espaciosvecinales
#EVAsigue
#ParticipacionCiudadana
@FRAVM

NEXT: The “Located Museum” Steps Up

LINKS

Merche Negro, “Golpe a la participación ciudadana: PP y Vox promueven la eliminación de asociaciones vecinales a base de quitarles los espacios concedidos”, 31 ene 2021, El Pais
https://elpais.com/espana/madrid/2021-01-30/golpe-a-la-participacion-ciudadana.html?fbclid=IwAR3gZl8AEIlwmK9ZanUzsgbLHTNw-DoQQiCAMOcr87GQnVD6oMm_L0UT5oA

Agencias, "Ayuntamiento recupera el solar de Antonio Grilo, okupado durante una década", 7/12/2020, La Vanguardia
https://www.lavanguardia.com/vida/20201207/6101891/ayuntamiento-recupera-solar-antonio-grilo-okupado-decada.html

Leah Pattem in Madrid, "Spanish shantytown residents face third month without power as snow forecast", Mon 7 Dec 2020, The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/07/spain-shantytown-residents-facing-third-month-without-power-as-snow-forecast-canada-real

Reina Sofia, “Museo Situado” manifesto
https://www.museoreinasofia.es/museo-situado/museo-situado