Arroces del Mundo, Munduko Arrozak, is a popular
fiesta being held since 2004 in
San Francisco neighborhood, Bilbao (Basque country) . This
barrio, apart from the center for the estuary and the railway, is four times more populated than the rest of the city; it has always been stigmatized as a ghetto, related with prostitution, considered a marginal part of the city where the immigrant live, and recently is becoming to be partially gentrified. The
fiesta is the result of a patient
networking that the
Coordinadora de Grupos de Bilbao la Vieja, San Fraencisco y Zabala had been doing for years: this organization was born to influence in the Renewal Plan designed by the City Council, and is made of groups and individuals who had already done
projects of social communication in the neighborhood. The idea of the
fiesta serves both to denounce the abandon of the neighborhood, and to
aim at the construction of intercultural relationships through autonomy and self-organization: the organizers of the event stress that
as many people are involved, as less conflicts and incidents ocurr - with the practice, this undermines the securitarian discourse used by the authorities to increase police presence in San Francisco neighborhood.
