COLLABORATIVE GOVERNANCE UNDER AUSTERITY IN BARCELONA:
A COMPARISON BETWEEN EVICTIONS AND EMPTY URBAN SPACE
MANAGEMENT
Marc Parés
marc.pares@uab.cat
Rubén Martínez
Ruben.Martinez.Moreno@uab.cat
Ismael Blanco
ismael.blanco@uab.cat
Institut de Govern i Polítiques Públiques (IGOP)
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
CITY FUTURES INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE
Special Session: Collaborative Governance Under Austerity
Paris, 18-20 June 2014
Abstract
By the means of comparing two salient policy issues related to the crises effects in Barcelona, housing evictions and the management of vacant urban spaces - this paper analyses the
evolution of collaborative governance arrangements amidst scarcity. We conclude that
collaborative governance in Barcelona is moving between continuation and reformulation.
Although a new institutional discourse is emerging stressing new forms of co-responsibility and
co-management, the main shifts in the way of tackling the crisis effects in Barcelona comes
from social movements and community organizations. Finally, we note that collaborative
governance evolution in Barcelona is not only context and path-dependent but also issuedependent.
Keywords: urban governance, crisis, participation, evictions, empty urban spaces, grassroots
movements.
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1. Introduction
The current crisis has produced important urban effects in south European cities. Drawing upon
the comparison between two of these crisis effects in Barcelona (housing evictions and urban
empty spaces) in this paper we analyse social and institutional responses in order to show the
evolution of collaborative governance arrangements under austerity.
While social movements continue to appeal networked forms of collective action (Mason, 2012;
Merrifield, 2011), in public administration the former enthusiasm for network governance seems
to have diminished (Davies and Blanco, 2014). Collaborative governance, though, understood
as ‘governing arrangement where one or more public agencies directly engage nongovernmental actors in a collective decision-making process that is formal, consensus-oriented,
and deliberative and that aims to make or implement public policy or manage public programs
or assets’ (Ansell and Gash, 2008: 544), may also represent a good way to tackle crisis effects
in a context where the State is losing effectiveness. Thus, in cities where collaborative
governance has an important path, should these arrangements follow a strategy of
enhancement, retrenchment or innovation?
Barcelona has a long history of community organisations and social movements and, at the
same time, during the last 30 years has developed a complex network of participatory
governance arrangements. Despite this background could facilitate collaborative responses to
the crisis consequences, fiscal retrenchment poses major governance challenges. Moreover,
after 32 years of left-wing government, the City Council shifted to a conservative government in
2011. Our interest, thus, is to analyse how collaborative governance arrangements have
evolved in this changing context. As we will see, our case study shows that collaborative
governance evolution is not only context and path-dependent but also issue-dependent.
First of all we introduce the city background in order to better understand the context and the
trajectory in which these policy issues are being tackled. After that, we focus on the evolution of
grassroots movements in Barcelona after the crisis outbreak in these policy fields, analysing
both policy fields. Then we look at the local government’s policy responses and the specific
collaborative arrangements that it has adopted. Finally, we conclude by summarizing the
comparison between both policy issues.
2. City background
Barcelona, the main city of Catalonia (Spain), is a Mediterranean compact city of 1.6 millions
inhabitants (91 km2), inside a great Metropolitan Region of 5 million inhabitants (163
municipalities and 633 km2). The city is divided into 10 decentralized districts and 72
neighbourhoods, with significant urban and socio-economic differences among them.
Barcelona has undergone profound transformations since the arrival of democracy by the end of
the 1970s. After the industrial crisis in the first half of the 80s, Barcelona experienced a strong
process of urban transformation, with an intense rehabilitation of its urban fabric and a deep
tertiarization of its economy. A clear public strategy was developed, involving the private sector,
to shift the city through the cultural industry and the knowledge economy (Casellas, 2006). In
few years Barcelona became one of the most attractive cities for tourism and capital flows and
the most admired city by other mayors and local leaderships in what concerns its urban
development (Ajuntament de Barcelona, 2011). Such transformations have to do with the
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evolution of the general conditions in the country (democratization, accession to the EU,
expansion of the Welfare State, etc.), but they are also closely related to the urban policies
carried out during this period.
These policies have given shape to what is known as the “Barcelona Model”, a model
characterized by two main factors. First, using mega-events (Olympic Games in 1992 and
Universal Forum of Cultures in 2004) as catalysts for great urban transformations (such as the
recuperation of the seafront, the rehabilitation of the old district, the development of New
Downtown Areas and the construction of the ring roads). Second, developing public-private
partnerships and public participation arrangements as strategies of legitimization and
involvement of civil society in urban public policies. According to Blanco (2009), though, the
model has evolved significantly over time, and has been materialized differently depending on
policy areas (urban planning, social policy, environment, etc.) and urban areas (new areas of
centrality, urban neighbourhoods, peripheries etc.).
Since the first democratic elections in 1979 to the last municipal elections in 2011 the City
Council of Barcelona was governed by a coalition of progressive parties. The PSC, a socioliberal (labour) party, was the hegemonic political force during this period. The PSC governed
the city together with ICV-EUiA, a political organisation that comes from the communist tradition
and is now self defined as an eco-socialist coalition. The ICV-EUiA coalition has taken on
important positions in the city government such as the departments of social welfare and
environment. Barcelona’s urban policies during this period, thus, are the result of the socioliberal values of the PSC on one hand (McNeill, 1999), and the permanent need of balances
(asymmetrical) with the minority eco-socialist party.
In 2011, a conservative coalition, CiU, won the municipal elections. Since then on, this coalition
runs the municipal government, despite not having an absolute majority. The CiU government is
supported by PP, the right-wing party that is currently running the Spanish government.
Therefore, changes on governance arrangements and power relationships that will be analysed
in this paper are not only a consequence of the current crisis but also the result of a political
shift at the City Council.
2.1. The impacts of the economic crisis on the city
The impacts of the economic crisis in Barcelona are significant in terms of unemployment,
poverty and socio-spatial inequalities. Due to a very international and diversified economic
structure, these impacts are less notable than in the whole country. Nevertheless, despite these
facts have helped to attenuate the crisis effects on the city, nowadays they are starting to show
some signs of depletion (Ajuntament de Barcelona, 2013). Therefore, the city is becoming more
and more vulnerable.
Unemployment in Barcelona has grown from 8,4% in 2008 to 19% in 2012. However, the
unemployment rate is higher in the whole of Catalonia (24,1%) and even higher in the whole of
Spain (26,2%). The at-risk-of-poverty rate was 16% in 2012 (19,9% in Catalonia) and
inequalities have increased deeply between 2007 and 2010 (Ajuntament de Barcelona, 2012).
Immigrants and young people are two especially vulnerable groups. Young people represent
40,3% of the population and more than the half of them are unemployed. Foreign population
represents 17,3% of the whole population, but 21,1% of the unemployed people are immigrants.
As we have previously said, social differences have a specific geographical translation in the
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city and, for instance, while some neighbourhoods have 41,6% of immigrants, others have
12,4%.
The crisis in Spain has also affected public budgets of national, regional and local governments.
However, the debt of the Barcelona City Council is moderate (688,7€ per capita in 2013) and its
public finances are in a much better state than in other big cities like Madrid, with a public debt
of 2.193,7€ per capita in 2013.
The current crisis, though, is also the result of the depletion of an urban model that, specially in
some parts of the city, prioritized the attraction of flows of capital rather than urban policies
promoting and facilitating residential functions, social relationships and citizen welfare (Delgado
2005). In this context new urban problems, like housing evictions and vacant urban spaces,
have emerged in Barcelona as a consequence of the crisis effects.
The real estate bubble, a low interest rate and a tenure regime based on property explain why
the crisis has generated such severe effects over the right of housing in Barcelona, specially in
the peripheral neighbourhoods. Spain has the lowest rent public housing stock in Europe. Thus,
the access to a basic need such as housing has been basically provided through the financial
market. Many people moved during the bubble from Barcelona to the second periphery of the
Metropolitan Region (Parés et al., 2013). The more disadvantaged areas of the city were
occupied by low-income families, most of them immigrants, that bought their dwellings through
easily affordable bank mortgages. When the financial crisis broke the value of property assets
felt down, unemployment grew up and many families could not afford to pay their mortgage.
Furthermore, the Spanish Mortgage Law, which has been declared abusive by the European
Court of Justice, deeply penalizes mortgaged people: they continue heavily indebted even if
they return their homes to the banks. Catalonia is the region of Spain most affected by this
situation and, as a consequence, almost 19.000 evictions were carried out during 2013.
Nevertheless, it is also important to highlight that most of the evictions that are currently taking
place in Barcelona are related to rent non-payment.
As we have previously noted, Barcelona has been the epicentre of a model of urban planning
focused on macro-projects and mega-events. The built environment has been transformed
during the last three decades at the rhythm of these projects and according to the real estate
bubble. However, when the bubble burst most of the capital left and the city stopped its
permanent reconfiguration. Simultaneously, cuts in the public sector have also slowed public
investment. Consequently, empty urban spaces, or spaces without use, have multiplied. At the
same time, and contesting to this situation, several social organizations and grassroots
movements have developed urban actions in order to trigger empty urban spaces outside the
market and also outside (or beyond) the State (Bellet, 2014).
2.2. A long history of community organizations and social movements
Barcelona has a long history of community organizations and social movements. Analysing its
evolution we can stress the significance of three types of social organizations:
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Neighbourhood associations: they came out and became very strong in the context of
the late Francoism (60s and 70s). They have continued to play a very important role in
the context of democracy, despite some of the interviewed consider that they have lost
capacity of social mobilization and representation.
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Third Social Sector: there is a dense network of social care organizations in Barcelona,
which develop their activity on the basis of volunteerism and with public aid. They are
also involved in a number of consultative forums, like the Social Welfare Municipal
Forum – an advisory forum for the social policies in the city.
Urban social movements: they have strong links with the no-global movement and the
neighbourhood associations, specially the Federation of Neighbourhood Associations of
Barcelona (FAVB). Such movements are very critical of the “Barcelona Model” of urban
development, which they consider as a reflection of global neoliberalism. They denounce
that it has provoked the touristification of the city, gentrification in areas like the seafront
and the city centre, abandonment of peripheral areas and the increase of social
inequalities.
2.3. A complex network of citizen participation arrangements
During the last 30 years the Barcelona City Council has developed a dense and complex
network of institutionally-led formal arrangements of citizen participation. Most of these
arrangements are regulated by the Citizen Engagement Rules, passed by the City Council in
2003. Some of them fall beyond such regulatory framework. The main types of citizen
participation structures in Barcelona are the following:
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A dense network of consultative bodies made of the representatives of the City Council
and of the main social organizations which meet up on a regular basis: one City Forum
and a myriad of thematic forums at city, district and neighbourhood levels.
A myriad of ad-hoc participatory processes linked to different type of local policies
(strategic planning, urban and neighbourhood regeneration projects, social programs,
etc.) and using different kinds of participatory methods.
Different types of participatory mechanisms such as citizen workshops, citizen juries,
public hearings and referendums.
Different kinds of “agreements” or partnership structures between the City Council and
social organizations in fields like social inclusion, sustainability, employment and
mobility/transport.
3. Grassroots movements after the crisis outbreak
In the Spanish State, the burst of the housing bubble and the current party system disrepute
have coincided. The 15M movement (also known as the “Indignados Movement” was without
any doubt an event that took shape within this context. As it is well known, from 15th May 2011
a lot of public squares of cities across Spain were occupied by this citizen movement.
Thousands of people took the streets and over the following days camped in the plazas,
mobilized through social networks calling for “Democracia Real YA!” (Real democracy NOW!).
With slogans and shouts that are already part of the social imaginary like “they do not represent
us” or “we are not merchandise in the hands of bankers and politicians” the 15M movement
placed the political institutions at the centre of their critique. Criticism towards political and
financial class and a very critical view regarding the two-party system (formed by the parties
PSOE and PP) who is accused of being primarily responsible of the crisis. On the other hand,
one of the main demands of 15M was the need for a more participatory democracy, a system in
which citizens can take part in public decision-making more regularly.
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After the first outbreak in 2011, the 15M has tended to decentralize, from neighbourhood
assemblies to more complex social processes where 15M values have been influencing new
spaces of social action or spaces that were already established. As outlined below, this
expanding process has been very influential in the practices of urban participation in Barcelona,
both in the forms of organization of new social actors and the emergence of a new political
culture on ways to deal with the institutions.
More specifically, we are going to analyse some citizen movements that have emerged around
two areas closely related to the effects of the crisis in Barcelona: first, the problems of housing
and especially evictions; second, the necessity of giving new social and community uses to
empty urban spaces. This will provide us some basic ideas about non-institutional practices of
citizen engagement, formal mechanisms of public participation and the relations between
institutions and the citizens.
3.1. Evictions: the institutional dysfunction and citizen movements’ reaction.
Urban Habitat is the area of the City of Barcelona dedicated to urban planning, infrastructure,
housing and the environment. Within this area, we find the Deputy Management of Housing of
Barcelona, a public department that directs and coordinates the activities of regeneration of the
urban land (remodelling and development) and construction and access to housing. It also
oversees the maintenance and rehabilitation of housing in the city. To better understand the
tasks of this public entity and how they are tackling the problem of evictions, we interviewed
Toni Sorolla. Sorolla is the Deputy Manager of Housing of the City Council of Barcelona and
Chief Executive Officer of the Municipal Housing Board.
In his view, the central pitfall related to local public administration is the impossibility of an
effective institutional response to the problem of housing because of two main reasons: the
challenge of long term policies and the difficulty of placing housing ahead of the economic
priority. In his own words: «Housing policies require a long planning period. This conflicts with
the need for immediate answers to pressing problems, but also with political terms. For
politicians, having to respond to 4 years away does not help. It will take many years for this to
be solved and it will be years where the political culture has to put housing policies in the first
place, as an important priority, not just reacting to media trends or claims and urgent social
needs.»
One case mentioned by Sorolla where this institutional incapacity to respond to the structural
problem is perceived is in part of the contents of the 2008-2016 Housing Plan, a document
consisting on a set of measures that seek to react to the problem of housing in Barcelona. In
this Housing Plan, there is a line of work devoted to the problem of real estate mobbing - i.e.
real estate investors harassment on tenants. To address this problem, an agreement with the
Superior Council of the Public Prosecution was conducted and a monitoring protocol for cases
was designed. But now in Barcelona, one the most important problems is the housing payment
and the evictions for not paying the housing rental and, as Sorolla remarks «we have to
implement support for rental payments or emergency housing, which is managed by a Table of
Emergency, where these cases are typified. We make programs to address the market failures.
But this is such a liberal and wild market, that it varies continually and the measures we take are
just patches.»
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In this problematic context of public dysfunction, is where The Platform of Citizens Affected by
Mortgages (PAH) is continuously acting to respond daily to a growing social demand and trying
to carry out measures, which may amend these structural problems. The PAH movement was
born in 2009 and comes from earlier platforms that defended the social right to housing like V
de Vivienda. But the 15M political process has allowed the PAH to escalate, expand and
redesign their practices. In this sense, 15M has meant a step forward for the housing right
support movements. The most important demands that have led this citizen platform are an
immediate stop to all evictions and sole property and the transformation of empty houses held
by financial institutions into social housing. With the several campaigns for Stop Evictions the
platform has stopped more than 1000 evictions during its 5 life years.
Ernesto Marco, one of the members and spokesman of the PAH in Barcelona, explained us
both the forms of organization that the PAH is using and the main problems encountered in their
practice of support to the right to housing. In Catalonia there are more than 60 local assemblies
of the PAH which meet weekly. Furthermore, a Catalan assembly takes place every 4 weeks,
where more than 200 activists representing the Catalan local assemblies meet and discuss
campaigns, design lines of action and share information. At the regional level, there is autonomy
to perform specific campaigns, depending on the singularities of the problem of housing and
evictions in each place. There is great flexibility in the organizational form of the PAH, adapting
it to the concrete needs and what is considered a priority in every moment.
Ernesto Marco told us something that illustrates the ability of the PAH to change its strategies,
so as to make them more effective at every new situation: «a good example is how we have
changed the forms of negotiation and pressure in the face of cases of evictions. At first we
carried out individual negotiations, working case by case, but with increasing demands, this
became unmanageable. Then we saw that it was more effective to do collective bargaining with
banks organizing groups through a coordinator. This is useful both organizationally and
politically, in order to raise awareness of the problem, to place the right to housing as a main
theme (rather than individual ownership of each) and also to answer all the claims.»
Evidently, in the forms of organization of PAH there is an essential element related to
communication and the continuous dissemination of its activities. The intensive use of
communication networks (through social networks like Facebook or Twitter) and the continuous
presence in the media (from most mainstream media debates on prime time television but also
alternative media) is a very well-structured architecture, designed by the platform’s
communication groups.
The PAH have also designed State-wide campaigns that can have a greater impact and seek to
interpellate big media at a deeper level. One of the most important campaigns until the date has
been the Popular Legislative Initiative (ILP) to demand to the Spanish Congress the regulation
of the dation in payment retroactively (in which the house is returned to cancel any outstanding
debt), stop residential evictions and adequate provision of social housing and affordable rents.
This ILP was submitted to the Congress by the PAH. February the 12th, 2013, the Congress
unanimously gave leave for the ILP to proceed. However, most parties submitted amendments,
the Popular Party unified the ILP process with the Government's proposal for a reform of the
Mortgages Act. Finally, the demands of this ILP endorsed by nearly a million and a half citizens
didn’t get a favourable institutional response. As Ernesto Marco concludes «this and many other
requests make the glass ceiling clear, where we find a continuously institutional deadlock. Even
proposals that have been brought to the Catalan Parliament by political parties such as ICVEUiA that were in part based on the requests we made on ILP, have been rejected by the
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conservative party CIU. Now we are going to try it at a regional level, at least to bring out that
they are systematically rejecting our demands, which predominantly have social acceptance».
One of the typical ways of acting of the PAH is to exhaust all legal measures before carrying out
direct or more belligerent actions. The last campaign of the PAH appeals to this glass ceiling (a
concept that the PAH usually use) that they continuously find at a State level and try to launch
the same demands at a European level doing escraches during the last European Parliament
elections. As reported on its website last May, the PAH presented a new campaign to reclaim
solutions to the dramatic housing crisis. The PAH will hold peaceful demonstrations
(“escraches”) in electoral events during the European Parliament elections campaign. Along
with blocking and occupation of bank offices’ actions and the occupation of block of flats through
the PAH’s Obra Social with which over 1.000 people have been rehoused, the escraches
campaign is another example of the need of the PAH to implement more direct action and
political pressure to find a solution.
3.2. Empty urban spaces: a new urban model prefigured in traditional social struggles
As mentioned at the beginning of this paper, the inability to produce competitive advantage over
the territory through the property mechanisms has favoured the practices of community reappropriation of public space in Barcelona. The economical devaluation of urban space and the
abandonment of public and private building projects, have facilitated the proliferation of a
number of vacant urban spaces with a potential ‘social value’. However, this does not mean that
the movements claiming public space or the self-management of obsolete equipment in
Barcelona are a direct result of the crisis. These practices have their own historical trajectory
and have accumulated knowledge regarding the use of other indicators to measure the value of
an area or to manage it effectively.
As in other cities that have focused their economic and governance model in extracting added
value from the urban space, in Barcelona different practices have appeared to reclaim public
space and to promote the community management of urban resources. It is clear that the crisis
and 15M represent a turning point for these movements. The case of Can Batlló is a practical
example of both the historical trajectory of community struggle for neighbourhood facilities and
the influence of the crisis and the 15M (Metropolitan Observatory of Barcelona, 2013).
Can Batlló was one of the collectivized factories during the Spanish civil war. It is in the La
Bordeta neighbourhood, in the Sants-Montjuïc Municipal District of Barcelona. In 1943, Can
Batlló became the property of Julio Muñoz Ramonet, one of the most influential men of the
Francoist Barcelona. The business as a textile factory closed in the 60s, taking all machinery
and renting warehouses to different companies and becoming a "city of trades" with more than
200 companies and 2,000 employees in the 70s. Despite campaigns to recover Can Batlló have
been happening since the 70s, demanding the expropriation of the enclosure, the position of the
Social Center Sants –one of the most important neighbourhood organisations – on this topic
was always ambiguous as a consequence of the complex confluence of interests: First, the
industrial workers who had their occupancy in Can Batlló and promoted consumption in the
retail sector of the neighbourhood. Secondly, homeowners who had their homes affected by the
General Metropolitan Plan of Barcelona and should be relocated. Finally, the need for facilities
and green areas for residents, who saw the neighbourhood was saturated with buildings, ring
roads and major avenues.
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After the neighbourhood movements of the 70s, the implementation of some demands on
municipal projects and the macro-events that seek to project Barcelona at international level,
the local public administration tried to finally implement several urban transformation plans that
attempt to revalue urban spaces in the area where Can Batlló is located. These new urban
plans led to the owners of Can Batlló to glimpse the possibility of obtaining large profits by
transforming the factory into an area of housing. But after a long period in which various plans
were designed and all kind of frustrated negotiations between public and private entities took
place, the burst of the housing bubble begun. The discomfort generated by this long period of
time without any work sparked the beginning of a strong lobbying campaign on behalf of
residents who demanded the initiation of Can Batlló’s remodelling. At a meeting of the
monitoring committee in early March 2009, the neighbours, tired of continuous delays in
implementing the plan, put a deadline for the start of works on June 1, 2011, coinciding with the
start of the mandate of the new council (CiU) after the local elections. It was called the ‘tic, tac
Can Batlló’ campaign, a threat in the form of a countdown. It is at that moment when neighbors
and the Sants Social Center created The Platform “Can Batlló is for the neighbourhood", an
heterogeneous network of social actors formed by collectives of architects, city movements,
neighbourhood associations, activists, etc. Four days before the deadline of ‘tic, tac Can Batlló’,
the City Council gave one of the ships (the so-called Block 11), 1,500 m2 to be used as a social
and cultural space for the neighbourhood.
Can Batlló is a paradigmatic process related with an alternative model of city, a model where
the citizen management of disused urban spaces is an important key to build a city beyond the
Barcelona brand. Can Batlló process combines institutional negotiation with elements of civil
disobedience in seeking to respond to social demands that neither the market nor the state
have managed to respond. Currently, Can Batlló is an essential reference for the public actions
that the local government has assumed, and for other social activists who are self-managing
urban spaces or urban lots.
This is not a linear process where an old way of managing urban land is overcome by a new
model. In fact, what we can state is that the economic crisis and the exhaustion of an urban
model based on monopolistic rent leads to citizen-based participatory practices that claim the
re-appropriation of public space. But there is not a totally new process, but a renovated one.
3.3. Non-institutional practices of citizen engagement: the pragmatic turn and socialbased solutions
After analysing some of the causes of the institutional dysfunction and the citizen movements
reaction in the support to the right to housing and in the self-management of urban resources,
we can stress some aspects about this processes emerging in Barcelona:
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First, the housing problem has become a central issue in the new social movements’
agenda - not only the PAH, but also another citizen platforms in defence of the right to
housing like like 500x20. This issue has also had a significant impact on the agendas of
neighbourhood associations like Ciutat Meridiana or the Federation of Neighbourhood
Associations of Barcelona. One important thing to note is that there has been an
increment of the practices of individual and collective squatting of buildings and houses
(owned by banks) supported or led by these platforms. This is related to one of the most
important operating premises of platforms such as the PAH: when all the legal measures
are exhausted, they finally choose direct action.
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Second, cases like the PAH, Can Batlló or other social practices for defending the social
use of urban space have in common trying to find solutions to specific problems. This is
both a way to accomplish concrete objectives and also a way to promote citizens’
political empowerment (through the citizen management of an urban lot or another urban
resource or through the collective promotion of a Popular Legislative Initiative or
stopping an eviction). This is closely related with the importance in the non-institutional
practices of citizen engagement to demonstrate that things can be changed, like shows
one of the most popular slogans of la PAH: sí se puede (yes, it can be done). This way
of acting is what we call the pragmatic turn, that it is based on incrementally moving from
the logic of demanding to the logic of doing.
Third, we must understand these new social processes born or reinforced by 15M not
like something that totally breaks with the traditional forms of social action. On the
contrary, these social movements extract knowledge and resources from the historical
course of the previous mobilisations, as we have seen in the case of Can Batlló or in the
case of the PAH. In fact, the headquarter of the PAH was located for years in the offices
of the Federation of Neighbourhood Associations of Barcelona. In most cases, the
relationships between traditional social actors and new social actors in Barcelona are
quite intense. Later, we will see that this relationship between new social and
neighbourhood associations also occurs in some self-management practices of urban
lots.
4. Policies and institutional practices of citizen engagement
After analysing the evolution of grassroots movements around both policy issues of our
research, in this section we will outline the role of the local government and the way
how collaborative governance arrangements have been used in this new scenario.
4.1. The Barcelona Social Housing Council and its limits
In the area of housing, neighbourhood organizations - particularly the Federation of
Neighbourhood Associations of Barcelona - have been the social actors who have traditionally
had greater influence on the City Council decisions. With the emergence and the strengthening
of movements such as the PAH, traditional social actors haven’t lost their role, but have rather
actively supported these new movements and have shared and extended their political space of
influence.
Eva Jou, consultant of the Deputy Housing Management of Barcelona, explained to us in an
interview the impact of these new social movements in city policies. The actions and demands
of the PAH have not only helped raise awareness of the social housing problem, but –as Eva
Jou states – «have driven to do a lot of activity at a political level.» Toni Sorolla also remarked
this question: «The PAH has accumulated such a large force that now have the capacity to
condition many things. They have made a big social and media pressure, and they have
especially pressured financial institutions.» Apart from the enactment of specific programs of
housing assistance, the local government has also adopted new institutional spaces for citizen
participation to tackle the housing crisis in the city - spaces in which the PAH has participated
with misgivings.
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The Barcelona Social Housing Council (CHSB) is the main institutional space of public
participation in the field of housing. Created in 2009, this is a consultative and participative body
of the Barcelona Housing Consortium (which is formed in turn by the Barcelona City Council
and the Autonomous Government of Catalonia), gathering 70 entities approximately. These
entities range from professional associations, public and private enterprises, housing
cooperatives and social housing agencies, political groups, universities, social councils and
representatives of the housing departments of the Autonomous Government of Catalonia and
the City Council.
The CHSB has different mechanisms to carry out its activities. The most formal mechanism is
the Plenary, which meets up once a year. The main objective of the Plenary is to make an
annual balance and assessment of the CHSB. Its purpose is to provide information about the
work of the CSHB. On the other hand, there is a Standing Committee, formed by different
entities such as neighbourhood associations, developers association, trade unions and nonprofit
social organizations. This standing committee is the body that coordinates the management and
direction of the CHSB activity and meets regularly.
The Standing Committee has initiated different working groups such as the social exclusion
group, the housing rehabilitation group, the working group for new construction and
maintenance of housing typologies or the working group of measures to promote the rental
housing. These groups are also formed by private entities, non-profit entities and public entities.
According to Toni Sorolla, «The level of participation of these groups depends on the activity
that their members are performing, so it depends on their own involvement and commitment.»
The working group on social exclusion, for example, was the one that drafted almost entirely the
chapter devoted to these problems in the Housing Plan of 2008. Nowadays, this group is
configured as a monitoring group and when the Deputy Housing Management intends to make
any changes or new regulations related to social exclusion and housing, a meeting with the
working group on social exclusion is called.
When assessing the participatory quality of CHSB, Toni Sorolla notes that the Standing
Committee meetings are always arranged by the Deputy Housing Management: «this is simply
because we are the ones who are doing it, not because it cannot be otherwise. In
institutionalized spaces of participation it often happens that those who launched the initiative (a
public institution) are the ones who mark the group's activity.»
On the other hand, Ernesto Marco from la PAH notes that the quality of these participatory
processes is not so much related with the commitment or intensity of participation, but with an
underlying problem: the aim and methodologies of these spaces. As Ernesto Marco explained
«we, as a social movement, have contact with the Table of Evictions or with the Table of
Emergency, since sometimes we report cases of people that come to us in which we
understand that quick measures have to be taken by the local government. Then, we monitor
these measures. We have people specifically dedicated to that. We maintain very pragmatic
relations with public institutions. We aim to bring solutions to specific problems that people
have”. It is this type of solutions what they do not find in participatory spaces like the CSHB.
The Table of Evictions was created after a meeting between the PAH and Xavier Trias, the
current mayor of Barcelona, that also had interviews with other social housing entities. As
Ernest Marco remarks: «at the beginning, we did take part in this Table but as we started to go
to some sessions we realized that all voices (financial institutions, developers, etc.) were very
much the same. Therefore, in this Table everyone’s opinions are equally valid (never mind if it is
the PAH’s or a developer’s) and then nothing is sorted out. The Table of Evictions or the CHSB
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is a formal space for listening to everyone but with little response capacity. What is needed is
political will. If you want to solve the issue of evictions you don’t need to design a Table, what
you really need is to solve these problems accepting the datio in solutum.» Mercé Pidemont,
another activist of the PAH in Barcelona that has been engaged in this type of participatory
spaces, confirms in an interview the same perception. She ads that coupled with the lack of
legitimacy and effectiveness of these institutional participatory spaces, the formal
methodologies used are far from being operative. Moreover, these spaces require a quantity of
time dedication and a quantity of human resources that informal structures such as PAH cannot
afford.
In line with these critical arguments responded Filiberto Bravo, the President of the Ciutat
Meridiana Neighbourhood, and Salva Torres, the President of the Porta Neighbourhood (both
neighbourhoods of the District of Nou Barris in Barcelona). They said that these formal
mechanisms of citizen engagement haven’t got «neither social legitimacy nor executive
capacity.» In fact, in both cases they used other participatory spaces at neighbourhood level like
the Neighbourhood Committees for protesting and for direct action. Whenever any public entity
or political representatives like Irma Rognoni, the District Councillor of Nou Barris, attends to
such spaces «we do them an escrache, because they are not implementing the solutions that
they should. They are too far from the Nou Barris neighbours» concludes Salva Torres.
4.2. ‘Pla Buits’, an institutional program for empty urban spaces
In the area of empty urban spaces, one of the undoubtedly most prominent institutional projects
to foster citizen participation in Barcelona is the Pla Buits.
The Pla Buits is an institutional reaction to the emergence of these new urban movements and
social collectives that reclaim a new use for economically devalued spaces. Pla Buits began
with a public contest addressed to public and private non-profit entities to develop a social use
proposal or a cultural activity with a one-year time management (extendable up to three years),
in one of the 20 municipally urban lots located in ten districts of the city. Finally, after the verdict
of the public contest, 12 urban lots have been loaned by the local administration for citizen
management.
This program has been launched by the Participation Department of the Urban Habitat area of
the City Council of Barcelona. Under the discourse of «the management of the meantime» this
program tries to respond to the need of «overcoming an age of uncertainty» with respect to the
model of the city. It is also conceived of as a way to manage public space and «obsolete
infrastructures». With these words Laia Torras, primary responsible for the Participation
Department of Urban Habitat, explained the project to us. During an interview with Laia Torras,
she analysed the different reasons why her department has adopted this plan and made some
reflexions on its implementation.
First, the program is driven by the necessity to engage «new social actors» in the design and
the implementation of «co-responsibility mechanisms as a way for solving social demands».
The main participative goal of Urban Habitat has been «to pluralize the agents involved; to go
beyond the logic of negotiation with neighbourhood associations: our main effort is to try to add
new agents» in the policy process, concludes Laia Torras. This marks a change in this type of
urban actions, where the neighbourhood associations have historically been the privileged
interlocutors of urban planning and urban projects. Torras explained to us that conceding «all
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the social representation to neighbourhood associations could be a perversion». The 15M
neighbourhood assemblies, which operate under the logics of open participative processes and
open assemblies, «indicates that there are other ways to work». At this point it should be
stressed that many of the projects presented in the Pla Buits are led by groups of young
architects and entities born in the wake of 15M and who have articulated their initiatives with
traditional neighbourhood associations. The characteristic of this program is the mix of social
and community organisations, a mix consisting of traditional entities and new social actors. A
clear example of this mix is the initiative Porta’m a l’hort (take me to the urban garden) - a
citizen managed urban lot in the Porta neighbourhood (Nou Barris District) developed in the
frame of Pla Buits. This initiative is driven by a group of young architects who used the legal
structure of the Porta neighbourhood association for the public contest.
Second, this program calls for a series of more pragmatic attitudes, which resonate with what
we saw in previous sections. As Laia Torras explained «In a very simplified diagnosis, since
these processes are more complex, we could say that the neighbourhood associations want to
develop a task of control, monitoring and accountability of what the local government is doing,
whereas the new entities and groups working in the urban space - for example, this group of
young architects who participated in the Pla Buits - operate more under the logic of doing than
under the logic of being informed» We can see here a way of trying to dialogue with this
pragmatic turn, with these practices that seem to focus on specific objectives.
Third, from the local public administration it is perceived a change in the ways that these new
social actors relate with the public institution. On this issue, Laia Torras argued that «with this
program we notice that younger people may have more radical approaches than neighbourhood
associations but in more constructive ways; they have clearer arguments and, a priori, there is
not so much distrust with local government. They have more propensity for dialogue and,
although they have some prejudice to the local government, it is not as strong as in
neighbourhood associations.» It is interesting to note that these reflexions that express a
change of attitude towards the institutions from new social actors have been repeated in other
interviews. Àngel Miret Serra, from the Manager's Office for the Quality of Life, Equality and
Sports of the City Council or Toni Sorolla and Eva Jou from the Deputy Management of
Housing, also highlighted this change in attitudes in the groups of young architects, or even in
some PAH activists.
But facing this change in attitude with some institutions, it is also necessary to note that this
increase in trust towards the institutions is not a synonymous of a naive or inexperienced
position. To contrast this institutional view, we made an interview to Roger Pujol, member of the
collective Recreant Cruïlles who, with other social entities, are managing an urban lot called
Germanetes, located in the Eixample Esquerra neighbourhood.
Roger Pujol explained that «from our point of view (Pla Buits) is a political opportunity that the
public administration has been able to detect. Many of these spaces are a social historical
claim, but the local government has reacted to these demands only during the crisis. In our case
we have been given 10% of the total urban lot, but it may be a Trojan horse to push, to press
the local authorities so that those educational and cultural facilities they promised they were
going to build in this space, are finally constructed». Pujol argued that Germanetes know to
what extent these measures facilitate the task of the City Council, both to better govern the city
–managing potential social conflicts– as well as to shift responsibility to the citizens. But, in the
other hand, there is also a trust that has been built, which is not a starting point, but it rather has
to do with an on-going dialogue. As Pujol expressed: «I am convinced that those who have
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taken the initiative of this program completely believe in it. And they have been very brave
pulling it forward.»
We can also find that there have been many technical requirements that have made this
management of the meantime become more complex. Some groups that participated in Pla
Buits have had to order and pay for a building permit and activities licenses to use these urban
spaces and –as Pujol told us– «Urban Habitat have not made legal arrangements to help out
with these type of problems. We also have to go to many meetings and make project reports.
We do this volunteer work and it is actually very expensive. We are not the secretaries of the
City Council». Therefore, maybe there is a new relationship with the institutions that may be less
suspicious but not less critical. Using formal mechanisms of citizen engagement does not mean
deleting the main objectives that led them to participate or not to raise the possibility of using
other mechanisms that put a strain on the relation with the institution.
The discourse of some social groups of Barcelona that are managing these kind of urban
spaces expressed the need to have a vision of the city as a whole, not only about the managing
of some specific resources. This is the case of Germanetes, but also Can Batlló and other
spaces that are not in the Pla Buits. That means, not only to maintain a dialogue-pressure
relationship with the local government for problems related to the concrete resource
management, but also by the actions that can be undertaken in other areas such as public
health or public education. As Pujol concludes «We will not undertake illegal actions that the
public administration or neighbours do not like. But we won’t think twice if we see that we need
to tighten the relationship with the institution in order to force them to do what they must do. We
are ready to undertake creative actions to denounce a conflict or an institutional neglect».
4.3. Towards a new collaborative governance in Barcelona?
From the above, we can highlight some aspects about the evolution of collaborative governance
in Barcelona:
●
●
●
●
In general, we see that collaborative governance in Barcelona is moving between
continuation and reformulation. More specifically, “old” mechanisms of citizen
participation are being complemented by new participative processes initiated by the
new government. Traditional participative structures, however, are called into question
by the new social movements and some neighbourhood associations. The process of
transformation of such participative structures is slow and it mainly depends on the trust
relations between social and institutional actors who want to promote this institutional
change.
It can be detected a shift from informative participatory spaces towards co-responsibility
mechanisms, specially in the management of empty urban spaces or the management
of public or private urban disused resources.
These forms of co-responsibility and co-management also involve a dialogue-pressure
logic between social activists and the institutions. This is not an idyllic way to encourage
participation and presents many ambivalences (participation vs instrumentalization,
participation for facilitating the dialogue vs participation for containing the conflict, social
engagement vs social disobedience). These ambivalences are part of the political game
in the current context of urban crisis.
In the area of housing, the answers to social demands are more related to responding
urgent social needs than to new ways to ensure the social right to housing. The
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●
institutional machinery in this field is not capable to find ways of ‘managing the
meantime’ as in the field of empty urban spaces. There are some proposals to
experiment with such an approach in the field of housing such as La Casa de las Idees
(an institutional open call to find solutions for new models for housing) but with very
moderate results. As Carme Trilla told us in an interview «public programs like La Casa
de las Idees are more a communication campaign to raise social awareness than a way
to find real solutions to the problem of housing.» Carme Trilla was the Housing Secretary
at the Catalan Autonomous Government (2006-2010) and is now primarily responsible of
the Service of Mediation in Housing of CARITAS.
Housing cooperatives like Sostre Civic or La Borda - a housing cooperative recently
launched in Can Batlló by several neighbourhood and city-level organisations - indicate
that even in the housing field, new citizen responses to the urban crisis are being
developed. Such responses are beginning to get some support on behalf of public
institutions.
5. Synthesis and conclusions
On the basis of the comparison between two salient policy issues related to the crisis effects in
Barcelona we can summarize the following findings regarding the evolution of collaborative
governance under austerity.
First, former collaborative governance arrangements in Barcelona are not being used as
important tools for the management of the consequences of crisis. The new conservative
government, the new social movements and some neighbourhood associations are calling the
traditional model in question. Critics state that traditional collaborative arrangements are based
on meetings without specific objectives, that methodologies are not thought for non-formal
social organizations, that there is a huge degree of distrust or that these spaces are designed to
inform but unable to execute or implement solutions. Consequently, participatory governance in
Barcelona is slowly shifting from spaces already created by previous local governments towards
new forms of participation (more issue-focused, more action-oriented, more open and flexible).
At the same time, though, some positive effects of these arrangements are recognized by
several stakeholders, like the necessity for some social organizations to take part in these
participatory spaces in order to keep informed on local policies. Furthermore, the pathdependency of former participatory structures makes them resistant to retrenchment and
changes. We can summarize, thus, that collaborative governance in Barcelona is moving
between continuation and reformulation.
Second, a new institutional discourse is emerging focusing its attention on new social actors
and trying to mobilise and to incorporate citizens who are not involved in traditional
neighbourhood associations. These new social actors can be entrepreneurs, residents,
architects, artists, etc. In this context, collaborative governance is moving from informative
participatory spaces towards co-responsibility mechanisms, especially in the management of
empty urban spaces. These forms of co-responsibility and co-management, though, also involve
a dialogue-pressure logic between social activists and the institutions. In sum, we can
distinguish three new forms of collaborative governance: a) co-management or co-responsibility
mechanisms for solving social demands, like the Pla Buits, b) policies that encourage social
innovation, like the Casa de les Idees process and c) bilateral negotiations with social
movements like the Platform of Citizens Affected by Mortgages (PAH).
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Third, the main shift in the way to tackle crisis effects, however, comes from social movements
and community organizations, not from the City Council. Social movements in Barcelona have
constructed a new collective imaginary of the housing problem and have evidenced that
institutions can’t solve this problem themselves. Contesting the institutional dysfunction in their
responsibility to solve public problems, social movements have produced new responses to the
right of housing and the self-management of urban resources. This new understanding of
participation from below is characterized by its pragmatism and the production of communitybased solutions. These new social processes were born and reinforced by 15M but they did not
break with the traditional forms of social action: these social movements extract knowledge and
resources from the historical course of the previous movements.
Finally, beyond the similarities identified in the analysed policy issues (evictions and urban
empty spaces), we can state that the evolution of collaborative governance arrangements in
Barcelona is issue-dependent.
Regarding the housing eviction issue we observe, on one hand, a local government that cannot
give an effective institutional response to the problem of housing and, on the other hand, an
emerging social movement acting daily to respond a growing social demand. As housing is a
basic social need and people affected by evictions are the most vulnerable social groups
(unemployed, immigrants, etc.), the kind of citizens that are mobilized, its resources and its
actions are also very specific. At the same time, though, the movement is characterized by a
high degree of coordination and solidarity between organizations, and that also determines its
collective action. Moreover, the movement is always going beyond the specific cases of
eviction, appealing for a more general basic right: the right to housing. The City Council, though,
has not a clear and strategic response to this situation and is acting reactively, recognizing that
former mechanisms of collaborative governance are not being useful and creating new spaces
that allow the participation of new social actors. However, these new mechanisms continue to
have most of the weakness of the previous ones and are not perceived as spaces of trust where
effective solutions can be provided. The characteristics of the real-estate market and the
previous housing policy are constraining innovative solutions and the City Council is not
providing a clear alternative to solve the problem. As a result, social movements are continuing
their strategy of disruption and the City Council is forced to bilateral negotiations.
By the contrary, in what concerns empty urban spaces, the City Council is playing a more active
role. The institution, in this case, is combining a leadership of new collaborative governance
strategies based on co-responsibility and co-management, like Pla Buits, with ad-hoc solutions
responding to new social demands for specific empty urban spaces, like Can Batlló. Although
the issue is clearly related with the consequences of the crisis, it is not focused on a basic social
need, like housing. Most of the new social actors that have emerged in this issue have an
important cultural background and have training in architecture, arts or other disciplines. They
are younger people that may have more radical approaches than neighbourhood associations
but hold them in a more constructive way. They have clearer arguments and, a priori, there is
not so much distrust with the local government. However, in many cases they are also
connected to traditional social organizations. The construction of a more general discourse
based on the right to the city is not so clear in this case and most of the projects are working
autonomously. Thus, there is not a high degree of connection and coordination among the
cases of community management of empty urban spaces. In this context, the City Council is
making a new public policy for this new policy issue based on new forms of collaborative
governance.
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We conclude that collaborative governance evolution in Barcelona is not only context and pathdependent but also issue-dependent. Both policy issues show how the long history of
community organizations and social movements in Barcelona determine the emergence of new
grassroots movements after the 15M. In both policy issues, moreover, we can observe a
tendency between continuity and reformulation of collaborative governance arrangements.
However, neither grassroots movements neither institutional responses are the same in the
housing evictions issue and in the management of empty urban spaces.
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Marc Parés