On one of the main streets of Nou Moles, one of the Valencian neighborhoods in the L'Olivereta district, residents count up to five real estate companies that have been filling the space left by local businesses that have already disappeared. Their neighbors, who are beginning to see in their painted facades that "they go beyond the swastika", know that to rent an apartment in the area, and even in the neighboring neighborhood of Los Desamparados, more than 1,000 euros are already requested. And that's without forgetting how much the supply of tourist apartments has increased in a neighborhood that, back in 2018, Airbnb recognized as "one of the most popular" in the city.
All these realities, plus a strong conviction that something must change in the streets they pass through every day, have led a group of neighbors to lead the new Assemblea de barri de l'Olivereta, an entity that was presented last Thursday at the headquarters of the Casal Obrer i Popular of the area.
The young Dídac Asenjo, a Political Science student and resident of the neighborhood, is one of those neighbors who has led a movement that seeks to align with others who are already fighting the housing problem in Cap i Casal. "The Desamparados neighborhood has always been an abandoned area of institutions, in fact Avenida del Cid is almost a border, but now the apartments are for 1,000 euros a rent. They are ensuring that the families who live there are still most vulnerable," explains Asenjo.
Neighborhood of humble and hard-working people, the Los Desamparados housing group is in fact the first, along with Tendetes, to which the Valencia City Council, already in the last legislature, decided to allocate Netx Generation funds for housing rehabilitation, but in the new Assembly now presented are quite distrustful of the administrations. Its activity will seek to resemble that already developed by the Sindicat de l'Habitatge in other districts of Valencia or the so-called neighborhood houses that already exist in the city.
At Thursday's meeting, to which not many people attended "because it was the first, we hope," says Asenjo, they talked about the vulnerability of this district, made up of Nou Moles, but also Tres Forques, Soternes, Fuensanta and the neighborhood de la Luz, one of the most degraded in the city. Attention was also paid at the meeting to the "fascist drift" that they claim they perceive among the young people of the neighborhood linked to some educational centers.
"It seems that the new rebellion is to confront the teachers, and social networks do not help... We are seeing it in the neighborhood institutes, so what we wanted is to create an organization that wants to fight for housing and also do social work to educate society," he defends.
Tomàs P. Alfonso speaks about these new neighborhood movements, more combative and very focused on housing and its difficult access, in his book "No sense sostre! El moviment per l'habitatge a València" (Caliu, 2023), presented this week . "Militant" in the fight for housing in the PAH of Elda Elda-Petrer and against the extreme right and hate crimes in the Al Descobert collective, Alfonso unravels in his narrative the history, operation and objectives of the four main projects that Today they make up the Valencian autonomous movement for housing: the PAH València, the Anarchist Squatted Social Centers of València, the neighborhood assemblies and EntreBarris and the Sindicat de l'Habitatge de València.
"There is a very powerful struggle, but we had a certain lack of theorization and I have tried to collect their experiences to try to explain what they do," argues Alfonso, who explains how the phenomenon that emerged after the 2008 crisis, linked to evictions, is now links to rental prices, occupancy and the effects of touristification and gentrification.
"The new movements have emerged after seeing the limitations of the institutional left. For example, just as the PAH was open to working with political parties, the Sindicat de l'Habitatge is against institutional collaboration," he explains.
In his opinion, the fact that new movements related to housing emerge is linked to two issues: "On the one hand, they arise because the left in its years of government has not known how to respond to what people need, and on the other hand , the fact that there are different formulas shows a certain generational change in these movements."
Alfonso explains that the squatter movement is "on stand-by" in Valencia, but considers that with the current context the squatter movement is increasing in the city, also encouraged by the policy developed by the Sindicat de l'Habitatge de València. "They are betting on active politics and on having a space under popular control in each neighborhood," details Alfonso, who predicts that more occupations may soon arise in properties in the city. Furthermore, he predicts a "complicated" moment due to the return of the right to the institutions, which may mean the reactivation of certain projects, such as Benimaclet's PAI, and with them more combat. "If a neoliberal movement is imposed in the city, the new movements will respond and mobilize, as there has always been," predicts Alfonso.
