[Squat!net]

The Can Vies social centre in Barcelona made headlines around the world when its eviction led to five consecutive nights of rioting in late May 2014. But the social center has a longer history than this.

Can Vies, originally built in 1879 to stock construction materials for the city’s subway, became the headquarters of the anarcho-syndicalist CNT transport union during the 1930s Spanish Revolution. Following Franco’s victory in 1939, the building became the center for a fascist, hierarchal labor union.

In 1997, the building was abandoned by its owners, Barcelona’s transport authority (TMB), and was subsequently squatted by the neighborhood’s youth. Since then, the Centro Social Autogestionado Can Vies has become a well-used and well-loved community space providing a variety of services to the people of Sants, a neighborhood with a strong tradition of cooperatives. [Read More]

[Statement of May 31] If you agree with our demands you can sign, either individually or collectively, by writing to us to us via email (elbanc [at] riseup [dot] net) or by sending us a direct message on Twitter.

A week has passed since the Catalan police evicted the Banc Expropiat last Monday, on May 23th. Since then we have seen it all: confrontations with the police, trash containers used as barricades, and banking offices with their windows wrecked. But we have also seen the Catalan police firing head-shots with their new foam ammunition, politicians of all kinds lying and going off on tangents, criminalization of protest in the media etc etc.
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We’ll try to enter again
May 27, 2016

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.
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[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.
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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.
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Ephemeral re-squat before heavy police charges in a second night of protestscops stop reoccupation
On Tuesday evening a new series of demos converged on the evicted autonomous social center, the ‘Expropriated Bank’ in Barcelona’s Gracia barrio. A group of protesters opened the welded steel plates and re-occupied amid wild cheering, just before the Riot Police commenced a series of brutal charges, that resulted in 19 injured. Fresh demonstrations are called for tonight, Day 3.On the evening of Tuesday, May 24, there were demonstrations and rallies in several districts of Barcelona, in a second day of fighting the eviction from the freed space in Gràcia. Among others, there have been meet-ups in Sarrià, Sants, Raval and Manresa. A concentration in Sants of 200 people joined the group of protesters and continued towards the Gracia district.

In several streets of Gracia there were spontaneous pot and pan banging sessions by neighbours amid cries of rejection against the performance of the Catalan riot police
At Gracia, about 400 people concentrated in the Plaza of the Revolution and moved down the Torrent de l’Olla towards the ex Expropriated Bank anarchist social center. [Read More]

The ‘Expropriated Bank’, a self-managed occupied social center in the beautiful Gracia barrio of Barcelona, has finally fallen. Symbol of resistance to repression and austerity , colleagues called for the occupation of 1000 more banks.

Seeding Mutual Aid against Capitalism

The eviction was not an easy task, it took police more than eight hours, using metal cutters, etc., to extricate the last heroes. The police struggled all day to get them out of a barrel of cement, itself inside a safe, inside the basement with metal barricades.

Meanwhile, reinforcements gathered and marched from several pre-organized points in the city until by 9.00 pm at least 2000 filled the narrow streets, but the entire front of the Bank had been welded shut with iron plates.

An army of very aggressive riot police, masked and without ID plates and with a helicopter, moved into the crowds of young people. Only for good luck no one was killed. [Read More]

Today El Banc Expropriat in Gracia, Barcelona, has been evicted, in an operation lasting ten hours. A demonstration has been called for tonight.

”City Refuge Mukhayyam..bullshit hypocrisy”

At the end of one of the anarchist Mayday Marches last Sunday an abandoned city-owned listed building was occupied to be converted into a self-run social center for refugees called  Mukhayyam.

Prospects looked good since the leftwing city council has banners reading ‘Welcome Refugees’ just round the corner.  However on the Tuesday morning 200 riot police evicted the building (see video below). The mayor Ada Colau claimed she knew nothing about it and that the Catalan Govt (also left wing) had ordered it ( they weren’t city police).

Dozens of activists had occupied after the ‘anarchist and feminist’ demonstration of Mayday to remake it as a welcoming space for refugees (Spain has promised to accept only around 16,000 but a mere 18 have been cleared so far).

At eight o’clock on Tuesday vans of the Mobile Brigade cut off all the streets near the building in the Gothic Quarter. A squad of agents charged the  front doors of the building and smashed in with a battering ram at 7.00 in the morning. It was a door with a high architectural value, included in the catalog of heritage of the City of Barcelona. [Read More]

Last Wednesday 13th of April, at 5 o’clock in the morning, the Mossos d’Esquadra started an operation in which they raided two houses and a social center in La Salut neighbourhood, «los Blokes Fantasma», where around twenty people that live in the building were detained for twelve hours.

In addition to the looting and destruction that comes together with a police raid, the operation ended with the arrest of a comrade that was already imprisoned due to the Operation Pandora, and who was under an European search warrant that was issued the 11th of April accused of participating in different bank expropriations in the German territory.
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Last Saturday a gigantic 10 screen cinema was occupied as an autonomous social center in Barcelona. The abandoned building is owned by the City Council who had failed to find a use for it. The action began as an advertised 4 day series of debates and workshops, meals etc… with a whole range of strikers, squatters, immigrants, feminist struggles etc.. taking part.. all to be held in a local square, and beginning with a street parade around historic struggle sites.,.

The parade ended with the Cinètika occupation

The liberated area, with thousands of square meters and ten cinemas will become, henceforth, an open space in the neighborhood. The promoters of the project want to build a squatting assembly, feminist and outside the institutions. No alcohol will be sold at the venue, as the group believes that “alcoholism and drugs are a problem in the workers neighborhoods.” [Read More]