In parts of Spain it’s a good moment for social occupations . In Barcelona, Madrid and other cities local council elections have suddenly swept street revolutionaries into power, with a mandate to slow down mass evictions by the predator banks, etc.

Strange things can happen. For example in her 1st days in power Barcelona’s mayoress Ada Colau turned up at a family eviction herself and just ordered the riot police to go home. We translate here the press release of a more traditional anarchist takeover in a traditionally communist workers town of 70,000 in Catalonia…… Followed by a report of the cheeky occupation of a historic building in central Barcelona. At last count there were over 60 such occupied self run social centers, totally diverse, in Catalonia. There are no central meetings, what occupied centers have in common is being assembly run, by consensus, being oppen to all and being anti sexist, anti authority, anti fascist, non- party.. That is they represent spaces liberated tenuously from capitalist rules and mindset, releasing explosions of creative energy.

PRESS RELEASE… Rubí Anarchist Workers Center

Today, August 3, 2015, we the public release of house no. 47-49 C / Prim (Ruby) and property Solvia (Banco Sabadell) to create the Anarchist ‘Ateneo’ of Rubí.

We do this both as a response to the speculation and predatory pricing of the houses, and to create spaces for the people of the town where we can implement self-management, mutual aid and solidarity.

As anarchists of Rubí we we intend to create a space to practice together mutual aid and solidarity, and to build an environment far from the dynamics that drown us every day in the system in which we live. The project involves creating an Anarchist Ateneo engaged in activities and workshops open to the people of the neighborhood and the town.The Anarchist Ateneo of Rubí is intended as a tool for social transformation from the root built among all of those who want to participate in a space that’s feminist, anti-capitalist, anti-authoritarian and self-managed.

We take time to rehabilitate the space and start the project, we will inform you. Health and anarchy!

Contact: anarquistasrubi (at) openmailbox.org

Transformadors building Occupied for a Social Center

Twenty people entered the space this afternoon, after seven years of abandonment.

A group of young people climbed up the front of the building , the former headquarters of the Youth Council of Barcelona. They got in through a broken window. The property is located on the street Ausiàs March 60 and the City Council ordered its closure in 2008.

Then they climbed on the roof, where they displayed a banner that read CSO Transformadors, beside the anarchist symbol. A few days ago, the local campaign demanding community run areas had hung a banner on the same building, with a call to participate in a public meeting in front of the building 3 days later.

An hour later, two patrol cars of the Autonomous Police appeared, who at first confused with the nearby Ateneo Popular Rec Occupied Centre asking the youth: “What are you doing here”. They responded, “We’ve been here over a year.” A few minutes later, a police van of six plainclothes officers parked in front of the Transformadors building for more than an hour. Finally, the van lefth and the anarchists produced brooms, buckets and scrubbers. They want to leave the space clean to present it for the neighborhood at a pre-planned meeting of the ‘We Demand Spaces’ campaign the next Sunday.



In the evening the occupiers released a statement explaining that they are “an anarchist collective who desire to establish ties with the neighborhood and bring life back to the space.” “We want to get going a social center run by an open assembly, outside of institutions and parties” with the desire to make “lectures, performances, soup kitchens, cinema and a library…,” they explained. “We’d like to know the ideas and needs of the communities around us to collaborate where possible. In the coming days we will be doing cleaning and organization of the premises to start to use it as soon as possible ” and they invited everyone to give them” a helping hand “. The ‘We Demand Spaces’ campaign later distanced themselves from the new occupiers on Twitter.

originals in Catalan.

Okupen l’edifici Transformadors per fer-hi un centre social