How the corrala movement is occupying Spain
The financial crash and plummeting property market struck Spain with a high eviction rate and a rash of empty houses. Now victims of the crisis are fighting back by setting up home in a network of vacant buildings
"Life changes when you lose everything," says Manoli Cortés. "There was a time when I was happy just to work and look after my home. Now, at the age of 65, I have suddenly become an activist." She is sitting in a typical Spanish living room: immaculately clean, filled with family photographs and dark wood furniture. Meanwhile, with its crisp, geometric lines, sliding French doors and private balconies, the exterior of her building looks much like any other newly built urban apartment block.
Look a little closer, though, and a different story is told. The afternoon sun shines down on concrete walls adorned with spraypainted banners and stencilled slogans, the most revealing of which reads: "Ni gente sin casa, ni casas sin gente" (No people without houses, no houses without people). This is Corrala Utopía, the first in a growing network of previously vacant properties in the Andalusian capital of Seville now occupied by victims of Spain's ongoing economic crisis.
Like much of the rest of the country, Andalusia experienced a building boom at the turn of the millennium. Locals took jobs as bricklayers, painters, carpenters, contract cleaners, and property values rose. But in 2008 the global financial crash brought this cycle to an abrupt end, leaving huge numbers unemployed and, after punishing cuts to social welfare, struggling to keep roofs over their heads.
In 2010 Spanish banks foreclosed on more than 100,000 households. Macarena, the district of Seville in which Corrala Utopía stands, now has the highest eviction-rate in the city. Yet in Seville's greater metropolitan area alone an estimated 130,000 unsellable, unrentable homes are lying empty.
Toñi Rodriguez, 44, left her home voluntarily last year. "I was unable to pay my rent and was being taken to court. I didn't want to build up any more debt. I was living on the street, sleeping in my car. Back then the people from 15-M [the grassroots community activist group that rose to international prominence during the 2011 Indignados protests] were holding public assemblies in a square every day. A friend said that they might be able to help me," she explains.
Together they came up with a simple solution. "We began to talk about the possibility of taking over vacant buildings," she says. "We spent four months planning before we did anything and I was very afraid of what might happen to us. I didn't know whether we would be allowed to stay or if we would be arrested.".. Read more:
