A pun on Never say never again on Gracia’s only SWP bodega (one of the proprietors claims to have known Yigael Gluckstein) may be suggesting that may be no imminent solution to the problem of bearded nutters rocketing their neighbours and then moaning about the response.

In other graffiti today, the anarchist nutters in the lovely little workmen’s cottates in c/ Amor in la Clota in the Horta riera are about to be evicted to make way for more shitty flats built to alleviate unemployment and to make people live the way Barcelona council wants them to live, so they are holding a demonstration on the 15th at 8 (we can safely assume that’s PM) at an undisclosed location:

Their propaganda is mostly a stoned rehash of 1930s anachronisms, but “greed breeds need” is quite well-timed:

[
Cf Sancho Panza:

Yo salí de mi tierra y dejé hijos y mujer por venir a servir a vuestra merced, creyendo valer más y no menos; pero como la cudicia rompe el saco, a mí me ha rasgado mis esperanzas.

Motteux's translation:

I left my House and Home, my Wife, Children, and all to follow you, hoping to be the better for't, and not the worse; but as Covetousness breaks the Sack, so has it broke me and my Hopes.

]

The squatters are in their own sweet way part of the ideological baggage of the peculiarly fucked up local state in Barcelona, so it’s nice to find more personal comment. The diagram here excludes us from imagining that the author’s mother is a lusty young thing, as opposed to simply a dick:

A whore lived here:

It’s owned by a taxi driver, so that can’t be true.

Some other squatters decorated this large abandoned villa near the top of Carmelo before and after the floors and staircases and roofs were smashed to prevent further occupation:

There was a heroin junky living sporadically in the ruined gatehouse (photo bottom) until recently:

Villa and neighbourhood at peace, from the lower stretches of the Turó de la Rovira, looking towards Collserola (the lone building is Torre Baró) and with the snowy Turó de l’Home and Matagalls in the distance:

Tags: anarchists, Barcelona, Clota, Gràcia, motteux, Quixote, squatters, Turó de la Rovira, walking, walking tours
Categories: Cities, Empires, rulers and warfare, Les bourgeois, War

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1. bulbul
   January 15th 2009 18:15

   Reminds me of a line by a German stand-up comic:
   “Ham ma’s oda ham ma’s ned?”
   (Southern dialect: ‘Do we have it or not?’)
   I don’t remember the context, but I laugh every time I think of it.

2. Trevor
   January 16th 2009 08:27

   Apparently I’m the only person who remembers a minor hit some years ago in Utrecht dialect called “Sa’da’m'n hoe’sein”, “Could that be my hat?”

3. AMOR
   January 17th 2009 14:47

   HERE IS THE TRUE INFORMATION http://www.alasbarricadas.org/noticias/?q=node/9613 THE OWNERS ARE MONKS THIEVES

4. Trevor
   January 17th 2009 15:26

   The comments (and photos) on IMC Barcelona are interesting. “Christians to the lions” points out that the Salesians of Don Bosco of the district, owners of the cottages, continue to burn people at the stake, “fani” calls for the death of the Pope and priests, “mE_dj” wonders why it is always the Catholics who are to be killed and never the equally evil Buddhists, “bring back the vagrancy laws!” wonders why it is that people who consider themselves anti-system all wear the same uniform, “Lucy BlackBunny” says it isn’t necessarily a problem that squatters are funded by rich parents because that is just their way of collaborating in changing the system (she calls however for the production of more theory), “Alex” says he is also a squatter and that the Salesians are actually very good people, who worked to get locals off heroin while the squatters introduced more drugs, and who cared for kids expelled from all normal schools while the squatters went to their private academies [a view supported in Wikipedia], “bueh” says that the Salesians are actually educators of the world’s ruling class and that nothing will be served by demolishing the cottages, “bertyia” is so stonèdly relative that we’re better moving on to “bring back the vagrancy laws”, who wonders how many immigrants and homeless the squatters have taken off the streets and threatens to squat the latter’s cars, bank accounts, etc etc.

   [Declaration of interest: I once worked for the Salesians.]

5. kalebeul » Blog Archive » Squats demolished c/ Amor, Horta
   March 13th 2009 14:40

   [...] The squatters–for all their social revolutionary bullshit–brought nothing but problems to the neighbourhood, but I’ll miss the cottages and their gardens full of fruit trees. The council–for all its historical memory bullshit–has been responsible for the massive destruction of pre-Civil War workaday architecture. As has been observed elsewhere, who needs Heinkels and Flying Fortresses when you have urban planners? [...]