The urban movement in Madrid

The most successful urban movement ever took place in Spain.

At the end of the Franco era, Spain was characterized by rapid industrialization, a result of which the dictatorship and the ban on trade unions were attractive to European and North American capital. With industrialization came an equally rapid influx into the cities, and since the real estate market was in the hands of the dictator’s friends, large sums of money were made on the increased demand without any major consideration having to be given to the needs of the people.
According to Castells, the Spanish city movement was what overthrew the dictatorship. Although the backbone of the resistance was the labour movement and the national movements in the Basque Country and Catalonia, the city movement, mainly in Madrid, convinced the middle class whose passive support the dictatorship needed that change was necessary.

The city movement consisted of a motley collection of categories, all of which were in opposition to the real estate speculation of the Franquistas.

There were newly arrived workers in shantytowns that they built themselves. They demonstrated for water, sewage, electricity, schools, buses and medical clinics in the same way as in the big cities of the South and they were supported by professionals from the middle class who thought it was a shame that there were such slums in Europe.

There were other newly arrived workers who had managed to find a place in what existed of social housing in Spain. That is, so-called social housing builder – due to the incredible corruption that existed in the Francoist apparatus, it was not uncommon for newly built houses to lack both water and sewage and electricity. Those who lived there thus had the same interests as people in self-built shantytowns.

There was the mixed population of the city center who aspired to stay while the Franquista real estate speculators preferred to exploit with offices.

There was the middle class in semi-central residential areas that the real estate speculators had also seen and strived to replace with offices and highways.
In their struggle to publish their demands and gain the support of the public, they broke the forced silence of Franquism and arranged street parties and organized local associations for inoffensive purposes and demanded the right to speak for themselves.

While strikes and Basque nationalism were too dangerous to even talk about, demands for water and sewage were initially considered safe enough for newspapers to write about. And critical journalists gratefully threw themselves over the theme and helped make the demands of the city movement the center of the opposition.

The driving force behind the initially dangerous organization was party members from the banned opposition, and these would then, after the fall of the dictatorship, also kill the movement to avoid a dangerous competitor, something they could do because they held key positions.

But from a factual perspective, the movement was still very successful.

The residents of the shantytowns got their real houses. They often had to help both plan and build their permanent housing areas, often in the same place as the shantytowns had been located so that the social organization could be maintained. The people of the fake buildings got theirs as well.

And the office exploits were stopped. Without it being on the movement’s program, a common right of precedence was also established, for example by subordinating car traffic to the needs of both parties and public transport. And in Spain, people are building cities, not peripheral enclaves, because the power of the land speculators has been broken. After the forced silence of the Franco era, it is the traditions of the city movement that dominate the public in Spain – at least according to Manuel Castells.

Reading
Manuel Castells: The city and the grassroots, Edward Arnold 1983