Occupying the #Hotelmadrid: A Laboratory for Urban Resistance

Abstract

Occupied the night after the worldwide mobilisation of 15 October 2011, the #hotelmadrid was an intensive, 50-day-long political experiment that turned an abandoned hotel in the heart of the Spanish capital into a radical political space and the perceived node of the indignados movement. The squatting of the hotel accomplishes key demands related to ‘real democracy’ and the re-appropriation of public space as a political space with claims for the right to housing, providing an excellent example for the discussion of the shifting dimensions of emancipatory struggles that emerged in the course of the Spanish 15-M Movement. In this regard, squatters engage actively against neoliberalism, promote the right to housing and convert such mobilisation into a forward-looking project that not only reclaims but also takes, socialising private properties through common repossession. Referring to strategic disobedience we discuss how protest camps, public political assemblies and squatting create spaces of citizenship and intend to crack naturalised facets of capitalism such as the powerful discourse about property rights.

Keywords:

• Squatting
• occupation
• 15-M Movement
• indignados
• right to housing
• Spain
• Madrid

Notes

1. In this article, we have adopted a pragmatic and neutral use of the terms ‘occupation’ and ‘squatting’, though are conscious of the variegated notions both terms may have in different debates.

2. A legislative reform in Spain has formally criminalised squatting since 1996, punishable by a maximum of 2 years in prison. However, this punishment has never so far been applied, and activists have developed a series of strategies to avoid punishment.

3. Spanish activists use the term ‘okupación’ for the politically motivated squatting of buildings, while aspects related to the ‘occupation’ of space are usually addressed as ‘taking’ (i.e. take the square). During the occupation of the Hotel Madrid the term ‘okupación’ was avoided.