When rights need to be (re)claimed: Austerity measures, neoliberal housing policies and anti-eviction activism in Spain

Abstract

Banks in Spain are receiving millions of euros of taxpayers' money, while hundreds of home owners are being evicted. Unable to continue paying their mortgages because of unemployment or insecure employment, people are chaining themselves to their houses or other symbolic buildings; embarking on indefinite hunger strikes; and suing banks for contract abuse. In effect they are responding to the crisis by claiming and affirming their right to decent housing. Using media, legal-judicial and activist discourses, this commentary investigates the innovative political and legal tactics of the Spanish anti-eviction protests regarding: legal claims, court mediation, dation in payment (full cancellation of mortgage debt when a property is returned to the bank) and the right to relocation. It is argued that, in response to their being constructed by the state as legally incapable, evicted families and individuals are enacting themselves as activist citizens when (re)claiming their right to decent housing.

Contesting Actually Existing Austerity

“…The housing crisis has been at the centre of the broader crisis in Spanish political economy since 2008 with foreclosures, repossessions and evictions being some of the main ways in which the crisis has hit many Spanish people (Cano Fuentes et al 2013, Barbero 2015, Vásquez-Vera et al 2016. Moreover, Spanish growth preceding the crisis was largely driven by increasing house prices (López andRodríguez 2010, Charnock et al 2014).…”

Spatial Analysis of Clustering of Foreclosures in the Poorest-Quality Housing Urban Areas: Evidence from Catalan Cities

“…In the Spanish context, the growing literature on the mortgage crisis and foreclosures has explored various related topics that include the economic, financial, and political dimensions of the problem [39,40]; the political and historical roots that explain the extension of foreclosures and evictions [41]; some diagnoses of the resulting social impacts [13]; the emergence of social movements, activism, and political participation in response to the problem [42][43][44][45][46]; and the impact of these phenomena on public health [14,47]. At present, there is a relatively small, although growing, corpus of academic literature that analyses the Spanish mortgage crisis from a geographic perspective.…”

Crisis de la vivienda, movimientos sociales y empoderamiento: una revisión sistemática de la literatura

“…La organización ha sido tratada desde diferentes ámbitos. En la literatura referente a la PAH, un amplio número de publicaciones destaca que la gente silenciada se ha vuelto activista y ha hecho posible romper con el modelo y proponer nuevos modelos de vivienda, así como inspirar a nuevos movimientos de lucha y de participación directa (Barbero, 2015;Feenstra y Keane, 2014;La Parra-Pérez, 2014;Provisional University, 2012). La explicación del surgimiento de la PAH se justifica por la falta de políticas eficientes en temas de vivienda (Cano et al, 2013).…”