Barcelona has once again been covered in banners and slogans this Monday. From early afternoon, Urquinaona square began to receive demonstrators who came to a new mobilization for access to housing. The early general elections on November 29 have not altered the roadmap of the convening organizations, which are already preparing a rental strike for next month.
The protest gathered tens of thousands of people, according to the organizers, and ended up exceeding initial forecasts. The number of attendees even forced a change in the planned itinerary through the center of Barcelona. The march, which was supposed to cross Sant Jaume square before concluding in Catalunya square, began after half past seven in the evening amidst slogans against the price of rents and real estate speculation.
A protest that looks beyond the ballot box
The message from housing organizations was clear: the ballot box will not stop their demands. Carme Arcarazo, spokesperson for the Tenants' Union of Catalonia, advocated for continuing the mobilizations and reproached the Government for its management during the last legislature. “The Government has dragged its feet for four years,” she stated before the march. The protest also brought together groups outside the housing movement. During the route, representatives of library workers, nursery schools, and social services intervened, in an attempt to connect the struggle for affordable housing with other labor and social conflicts.
Criticism also reached the political parties. Gisela Bermúdez, from the Socialist Housing Union of Catalonia, assured that no party is offering, in her opinion, a sufficient response to the problem: “From Santiago Abascal to Yolanda Díaz, there is no party that wants to end the housing problem”. Among the demands raised by the organizations are a reduction in rents and measures against homes owned by investment funds.
Among the banners and slogans, there was also space for the memory of Olga, a resident of L'Hospitalet de Llobregat who took her own life on September 7, after having lost her home almost five months earlier and leaving two daughters. Her case was incorporated into the protest as an example of the extreme situations that, according to the organizations, the difficulty of maintaining a home can cause. The demonstration ended with an eye on the coming weeks. The housing movement maintains its intention to take the protest a step further with a rent strike in November, coinciding with a political scenario marked by the call for general elections.
