The Corrala Utopias Bringing Seville Back to Life 

Published on March 7, 2014

SocietyEU-TOPIA: Time to VoteEUtopia: Seville

 “Some time ago a French pho­tog­ra­pher came to shoot a photo re­port on life in our Cor­rala. He took us all, seated us one fam­ily after an­other on a couch and shot pic­tures. In my fam­ily’s photo my daugh­ter is sit­ting on the sofa, my wife is stand­ing to her right and I am stand­ing on her left hand side.” Al­though the res­i­dents of Cor­rala Utopia got used to pho­tos and media at­ten­tion, they be­came tired of the media sen­sa­tion­al­ism. “Upon see­ing the re­sult of this ses­sion I dis­cov­ered that the pho­tog­ra­pher had pho­to­shopped our faces to make us look sad­der. My face was edited and I looked like I was cry­ing. I also looked ten years older,” sighs Al­varo. Sit­ting on the pave­ment out­side the Cor­rala, in the work­ing-class, north­west part of the city, we meet Al­varo, a swarthy, ro­bust-look­ing mes­sen­ger sent by the oth­ers to an­swer our ques­tions. There is no point in see­ing any­one else as “every­one would tell you the same story,” claims Al­varo; and we can­not go in­side the build­ing so “the po­lice won’t know what we have been doing in­side for the last few days”.

MEET THE RES­I­DENTS

Es­tab­lished in May 2012, Cor­rala Utopia was the first va­cant apart­ment block oc­cu­pied by the vic­tims of the on­go­ing eco­nomic cri­sis. It is in­hab­ited by var­i­ous peo­ple from for­mer hair­dressers to clean­ers and brick­lay­ers who found them­selves job­less overnight, who were kicked out of their homes and who, by and large, still have mort­gages to pay off. Al­though many other Cor­ralas have emerged through­out An­dalu­cia since then, Cor­rala Utopia is one of the few which has sur­vived. How­ever, its fate is highly un­cer­tain nowa­days. On 15 Feb­ru­ary, the Court of Jus­tice or­dered an im­me­di­ate evic­tion of Utopia’s res­i­dents, fol­lowed by con­ces­sions that al­lowed the fam­i­lies to find a “pas­sive so­lu­tion” to the prob­lem. Con­se­quently, the com­mu­nity of Utopia will most likely be dis­solved on 5 March. Its res­i­dents will need to find new homes.

This is a para­dox­i­cally hard task. De­spite Seville hav­ing an es­ti­mated 130,000 empty hous­ing units, none of them have been of­fered to the fam­i­lies. “We want to pay a so­cial rent, ac­cord­ing to our in­di­vid­ual in­comes, but the Gov­ern­ment does not want to hear about it,” ex­plains Al­varo, “More­over, they have been doing all they could to make life harder for us.” Just a few weeks after they had moved in, the city cut off the water and en­ergy sup­ply. “They spent 40,000 euros on that op­er­a­tion,” re­calls Al­varo with a cer­tain res­ig­na­tion, “We have been liv­ing here with­out water and en­ergy since al­most the very start.”The Cor­rala res­i­dents take water from the pub­lic foun­tain across the street and use petrol gen­er­a­tors to pro­duce power. “We also asked the Gov­ern­ment to allot us huer­tos so that we could grow our own fruit and veg­eta­bles. Only one fam­ily has been granted a plot of land.”

It's all about the peo­ple

“Be­fore com­ing here I worked in a nau­ti­cal club. I earned 2,500 euros per month, I bought a house; I was well off. Today I don’t have a house, nei­ther TV nor radio, but I am hap­pier. Money can’t buy hap­pi­ness,” ex­plains Al­varo, “Now I have more time with my fam­ily, we spend the evenings talk­ing with oth­ers and play­ing with our kids. We are like one big fam­ily.” In their free time, the res­i­dents of the Cor­rala, sup­ported by vol­un­teers, or­ga­nize ac­tiv­i­ties for chil­dren, learn to dance fla­menco and or­ga­nize events in sup­port of their move­ment. “We or­ga­nized Cor­rala Rock last year, a se­ries of con­certs in sup­port of our Cor­rala; we took fla­menco classes and used it for an es­crache [a type of peace­ful demon­stra­tion pop­u­lar in Spain, Ar­gentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Ed.] in­side the Iber­caja bank, the cur­rent owner of the Cor­rala. We even asked the Gov­ern­ment to help us fi­nan­cially in the or­ga­ni­za­tion of a sol­i­dar­ity cen­tre where we could ad­vise peo­ple from our neigh­bour­hood, and then open a so­cial can­teen. We never got an an­swer.”

MAKE some NOISE!

“Power is peo­ple united”, de­clares Al­varo and his be­lief is nowa­days shared among peo­ple all across the coun­try. We meet the mem­bers of the Plat­forma de Afec­ta­dos por la Hipoteca de Sevilla (plat­form for those af­fected by mort­gages in Sevilla, PAH) dur­ing a demon­stra­tion in the build­ing of an­other local bank, Caix­a­bank. It’s noisy, the demon­stra­tors can be heard a few streets away. Trum­pets and whis­tles are nec­es­sary arms to show sup­port for the right to “de­cent hous­ing” and draw at­ten­tion to a need for “a real so­lu­tion to the mort­gage prob­lem” - there are four mort­gage cases that are cur­rently being dis­cussed by the bank’s man­age­ment. These peo­ple have been camp­ing in shift for eleven days to demon­strate their un­wa­ver­ing de­ter­mi­na­tion.

 “The PAH is di­rectly linked with the In­dig­na­dos move­ment, or the 15M (the Oc­cupy move­ment born 15 May 2011). Back then peo­ple with the same prob­lems joined forces, started to or­ga­nize weekly as­sem­blies dur­ing which peo­ple in trou­ble with mort­gage and evic­tion would come to dis­cuss their prob­lems, re­ceiv­ing coun­sel and sup­port. In the Sevilla branch of PAH, we meet twice a week and gather about 280 peo­ple with non-solved mort­gage is­sues.” Is­abel is a so­cial worker who de­votes her free time to co­or­di­nat­ing the PAH ac­tions. “Our biggest suc­cess is that we have man­aged to avoid evic­tions,” Is­abel ex­plains with a smile, “Be­sides, we are not fight­ing for in­di­vid­ual cases. We work to­gether in solv­ing a com­mon cause. Here peo­ple lose their sense of guilt, they know they are not alone any­more. Thanks to PAH, peo­ple re­al­ize that they are fel­low cit­i­zens, not just con­sumers,” she proudly points out. In fact, this seems to be the rai­son d’être of all the grass­root move­ments of civic sup­port in Sevilla, and prob­a­bly in Spain as a whole. As Al­varo puts it: “We are look­ing for a so­cial vic­tory, not a po­lit­i­cal one.”

A HUGE THANK YOU TO CAFEBA­BEL SEVILLA - ELENA URBINA SO­RI­ANO AND CLARA FA­JARDO AS WELL AS TO PABLO GON­ZA­LEZ JIMENEZ.

THIS ARTICLE IS PART OF A SPECIAL SERIES DEdicated TO seville. IT'S PART OF "EUTOPIA: TIME TO VOTE", A PROJECT RUN BY CAFÉBABEL IN PARTNERSHIP WITH THE HIPPOCRÈNE FOUNDATION, THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION, THE MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS AND THE EVENS FOUNDATION.