Democracy, feminism and the city: My trip to Barcelona

By: jamjar
Date: 25 May 2016

Last month I joined a week long social movement tour of Barcelona with Global Justice Now to learn about some of the inspiring political developments that have been taking place there in recent years. The trip coincided with the Barcelona No TTIP (Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership) conference, an event that followed Barcelona becoming a TTIP Free Zone. After this week, I can safely say I have had a crash course in the activism scene in Barcelona and its politics.

Barcelona, especially since the financial crash, has been under the spotlight. Attention has focused on how hard the housing crisis hit the region: at its peak in 2013, landlords were sending over 500 letters of eviction a day. But today lots of people are talking more about the remarkable political response this has generated: a social movement to challenge the housing crisis, which has led to the election of Ada Calau, a feminist grassroots campaigner, as the city’s mayor.

There is no surprise then that a highlight of the trip was on Thursday when we met with representatives from Barcelona En Comu a citizen platform that was launched in 2014, and on which Ada Calau is standing as mayor of Barcelona. Barcelona En Comu promotes radical participatory democracy at its core and fights for community rights, tackling corruption and a community-oriented response to the issue of tourism in Barcelona. It stands for a new bottom up politics and aims to transform existing municipal institutions. Municipalisation is a key idea for Barcelona en Comu, and was mentioned throughout our discussions. Remunicipalisation is the idea of giving power to local government bodies, which would complement Barcelona en Comu’s radical democratic processes, which involve assembly decision making in different regions in the city.

Another prominent and very important idea for BeC is the ‘feminisation of politics’.  Kate Shea Baird, an English activist who’s based in Barcelona and is a member of their coordination team, explains the idea this way:

“Feminism is central to the way we do politics and to our goal of democratizing politics from below. One of the distinctive features of BComú, and one of the keys to our success, is the participation and leadership of women in every part of the organization.”

The feminisation of politics goes beyond having more representation for women in politics, however. This practise has manifested in the Department of Life Cycles, Feminism and LGBTI, which is dedicated to fight discrimination and sexual violence against women and the queer community. In addition, there has been a budget increase of 1.3 million euros for 2016 and a participatory process with LGBTIA+ movements to design the city’s LGBTIA+ Resource Centre. The feminisation of politics also means that the development of policies will take the impact it will have on both men and women into consideration. This includes the city budget, urban planning and all public services developed with gender equality as the goal.

Other highlights of the week included a visit to Can Masdeu – a well-known and beautiful squatted piece of land and buildings that overlook Barcelona. It has been occupied for over 14 years (despite an eviction attempt in 2002, which was fought off with non-violent resistance) and has a social centre and allotments locals can use.  We also met with Pablo Coterelo, who is a part of Barcelona en Comu and an expert on energy democracy in Catalonia. Pablo explained how the renationalisation of the water and energy supply is a high priority for BeC and how this is a part of the municipalisation project. More interestingly, he went on to explain that they are trying to establish a ‘public citizen’ company – a cooperative that is owned by the state. This is something that hasn’t been done in Spain before.

I couldn’t help but reflect on the current political situation in the UK while in Spain, especially in regards to the way the left organise. Although there is much to be done in Barcelona, a main issue being tourism – there are definitely lessons to learn from successes that led to a radical left movement being in Barcelona’s City Hall. One of these lessons is the importance of collaboration across different progressive organisations and parties, but that is most effective when combined with outreach and engagement with those most affected by social problems, and disenfranchised by politics. Barcelona en Comu make this an explicit aim, which then influences the everyday practise and strategy of the group.