The repertoire of housing contention: the birth of the Stay Put campaign in Barcelona

Abstract

Past research in the housing-movement literature has assumed a close link between the post-2008 cycle of housing financialization and the resurgence of housing contention in many Western democracies. However, the new cycle of capital accumulation fails to explain why housing movements privilege some strategic forms of contention over others, how tactical innovations occur, and what pathways they develop after cycles of protest. This article returns to the repertoire perspective to analyse the expansion of housing protest repertoires to tenants’ activism in Barcelona. It argues that the repertoire of housing contention has mediated relations between the new cycle of housing financialization and contentious interactions between tenants and landlords in Barcelona’s private-rental sector. Employing the case of the Sindicat de Llogateres (Tenants’ Union of Barcelona) and the Stay Put campaign, this article makes a twofold contribution to explain the transmission and transformation of the established repertoire in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.

Keywords:

• Barcelona
• contention
• corporate landlords
• housing
• repertoire
• tenants

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 While tenants’ unions had vanished in Barcelona since the establishment of Franco’s dictatorship, the main landlords’ association—Càmara de la Propietat Urbana de Barcelona (Chamber of Urban Property of Barcelona)—has been functioning since its foundation in 1901 until the present. The Chamber of Urban Property of Barcelona was the main defense organization of the city’s landlords, and the leading opposition in the historical rent strike of 1931 (vid., Ealham, 2005).

2 The Sindicat de Barri de Poble Sec is an autonomous grassroots institution which provides collective support to neighbours in terms of labour, housing, and migration-related issues. The neighbourhood unions of Vallcarca (Sindicat d’Habitatge de Vallcarca) and Gràcia (Sindicat d’Habitatge de Gràcia) are mainly focused on housing.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jordi González Guzmán

Jordi González Guzmán is a post-doctoral researcher in the Department of Law at the Pompeu Fabra University, Barcelona.