The Rumba of Barcelona (the “Can Vies effect”)

The fire that burned this escavator died out; but the one that thousands of us keep inside, is still burning.

The new urban model cannot allow for the existence of truly public spaces, without mediations or barriers, and much less for horizontally managed places: everything must function like a hierarchical and monitored stage set, where technologies, ordinances, urban real estate and urbanism are at the service of rapacious elites (Argelaga)

Requested by the metropolitan transportation authority TMB, the owner of this building occupied 17 years ago, the catalan autonomic police (Mossos d’Esquadra) evicted the historical Can Vies squat in Sants neighbourhood (Barcelona). The wave of popular uprising focused in Sants, during five days and five nights, and the demonstrations of solidarity in over 60 neighbourhoods, towns and cities of all Catalonia, careless of the enormous repressing device that the police deployed, exceeded all the expectations, and ended with an attempt to collectively reconstruct the social centre!