Social movements and class struggle: Against unequal urban transformations from the neighborhood

ABSTRACT

Processes of capital accumulation continue to play an important role in today’s cities around the world. The spatialization of neoliberal policies and projects generates its own contradictions, as well as resistances, in the form of urban social movements that can be interpreted and analyzed under the consideration of their constitution as social classes. The neighborhood of Poblenou, in Barcelona, has been the subject of attention and urban transformation for decades. This article, as a result of a long ethnographic research approach to these dynamics, is focused on the involvement of those groups that struggle against specific forms of dispossession in this particular urban environment of the Catalan capital.

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. The rally was also supported by up to 34 entities and groups from the district. Amongst these, the Ateneu la Flor de Maig, the ecological consumption cooperatives of Poblenou and even political associations such as ARRAN may be cited. The FAVB is the organization that federates the neighborhood associations in the city of Barcelona. “Doubling the number of hotels in Poblenou [so that] we really notice the effects this has on the neighbourhood.” Translation from Catalan.

2. Beteve, 26/11/2018. For further information: https://beteve.cat/societat/protesta-nou-hotel-poblenou/.

3. “The entities say NO to the Macro Hotel in Poblenou.” Translation from Catalan.

4. “We make fuss, they make their way out of the neighbourhood.” Translation from Catalan.

5. “Gentrification kicks out young people” and “Stand up to exploitation.” Translation from Catalan.

6. The pact was signed by l’Associació d’Empreses i Institucions 22@Network, the Federació d’Associacions de Veïnes i Veïns de Barcelona (FAVB), the Taula Eix Pere IV, the Poblenou Urban District, the Universitat de Barcelona, the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, the Universitat PompeuFabra, the Consorci bTEC-Campus Diagonal Besòs, the Pla Estratègic Metropolità de Barcelona, the Consorci del Besòs and, finally, by the city council of Barcelona itself.

7. The FAVB published a statement where it justified its “critical yes” and pointed out some questions which, in its opinion, had eventually been left out of the agreement, such as more forcefulness in the implementation of housing policies or the lack of steps to ease the lack of public green spaces. For further information: https://www.favb.cat/comunicats/acceptaci%C3%B3-ve%C3%AFnal-cr%C3%ADtica-al-document-cap-un-poblenou-amb-un-22-m%C3%A9s-inclusiu-i-sostenible.

8. “We’re demanding that the people here seated take responsibility, [you say that] you cannot do anything and within four days you will be asking for votes for the May elections. Please, a bit of decency, a little dignity.” Translation from Catalan.

9. The Ateneu la Flor de Maig is a self-managed social center in the district; Fem Rambla was a neighborhood initiative started in order to demand greater participation in the urban reform projects; the Comissió d’Habitatge del Poblenou (HP9) is a mutual aid and denunciation group linked to the eviction processes experienced by some families in the district, and the Arxiu Històric is a nonprofit organization that seeks to preserve the group memory of Poblenou. The other movements will be presented further on as they appear in the ethnographic account.

10. “The Commune … cancelled the payment of housing rent from October 1870 to April 1871, paying the amounts already paid to future payments and the sale of pawned objects was suspended at the city’s Mount of Piety” (C. Marx, 1871, p. 6).

11. As has previously been mentioned, Manuel Castells, throughout the 1960s and 1970s, introduced urban sociology in the study of this type of movement. However, from the moment of the publication of The city and the grassroots. A cross-cultural theory of urban social movements (1983), he would abandon the initial Marxist orientation of books such as The urban question (1974b).

12. It should be remembered, at this point, that Chapter LII of Book III of Capital, dedicated precisely to social classes, remained unfinished by K. Marx (2017). This fact is highlighted by Sven-Eric Liedman (2020) in his work Karl Marx, A biography, where he points out that the German philosopher was always concerned with making a correct definition of the term “class”, something that he could leave for last because, precisely, he did not know how to encompass. However, the first paragraph of this chapter indicates the existence of 3 classes: wage earners, capitalists and landowners, defining the latter as those who have land rents (K. Marx, 2017), which provides us with interesting information when it comes to defining urban social movements as referents of the class struggle faced with the appropriation of capital gains.

13. “There was a time when there were factories in Poblenou.” Translation from Catalan. This sentence has been taken from the documentary, Poblenou, de la fàbrica al gratacel, by Produccions la Llacuna. For further information: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1usCfr5xXY.

14. Today, the Vila Olímpica is the 6th district as regards income level in the city of Barcelona, with 58,562 euros/household according to data from the Spanish Tax Administration Agency (AEAT, 2014). The city has a total of 73 districts.

15. For the Catalan anthropologist Manuel Delgado (2007), the “Fòrum” was going to be nothing more than a “device to be used to turn the city into an advertisement …, a mere excuse for tourism and commercial promotion of the city, a false layer of pseudo-progressist moralism to cover the new macro-operations of macro real estate speculation, this time aimed at developing large areas of land that opened up the extension of the Diagonal to the sea and the development of the estuary of the Besòs” (p. 41).

16. MACOSA, Maquinaria y Construcciones, S.A., a construction company engaged in heavy industry.

17. In the so-called Compromiso de Barcelona, presented at the closing ceremony of the Fòrum on the 26th September 2014, the following was affirmed: “Over the past 141 days, we have come together, to see, present, debate, listen to, create, enjoy, disagree and agree about the things that are important to us, presenting proposals and initiatives, adopting agreements and commitments, subscribing manifestos and declarations, specifying projects in favor of peace, of a more sustainable development and cultural diversity.” This type of discourse was the sort that was to be denounced by actions such as “Paterem el Fòrum.” For further information see: http://www.fundacioforum.org/dossier_det.asp?id=2.

18. The Taula Eix Pere IV is a citizen platform formed by residents, groups and cooperatives from the districts included in Poblenou, brought together with the aim of promoting the social, cultural and economic reactivation of the Pere IV crossroads (Taula Eix Pere IV, 2014).

19. Barcelona en comú was the result of social movements with strong presence in the city, such as the Plataforma de Afectados por la Hipoteca (PAH), where the current Mayoress was in fact the spokesperson or the Observatori de DretsEconòmics, Socials i Culturals (DESC), amongst others.

20. The Partit dels Socialistes de Catalunya (PSC) left the municipal Government in the summer of 2017.

21. In fact, after the elections of May, the local government was a coalition of Barcelona en comú and the Partit dels Socialistes de Catalunya (PSC).

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José A. Mansilla

José A. Mansilla is an Urban Anthropologist. He is a Professor and Researcher at the Ostelea School of Tourism & Hospitality of the University of Lleida Campus, Barcelona, Spain. He is a member of the Anthropological Observatory of Urban Conflict, the Work Group on Ethnography of Public Spaces from the Catalan Institute of Anthropology, the Research Group on Exclusion and Social Control from the University of Barcelona, and the Research, Innovation and Dissemination Department.