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THE URBAN POLITICS
OF SQUATTERS’
MOVEMENTS
edited by
MIGUEL A. MARTÍNEZ LÓPEZ
The Contemporary City
Series Editors
Ray Forrest
Lingnan University
Hong Kong
Richard Ronald
University of Amsterdam
Amsterdam, Noord-Holland
The Netherlands
In recent decades cities have been variously impacted by neoliberalism,
economic crises, climate change, industrialization and post-industrialization
and widening inequalities. So what is it like to live in these contemporary
cities? What are the key drivers shaping cities and neighborhoods? To what
extent are people being bound together or driven apart? How do these
factors vary cross-culturally and cross nationally? This book series aims to
explore the various aspects of the contemporary urban experience from a
firmly interdisciplinary and international perspective. With editors based in
Amsterdam and Hong Kong, the series is drawn on an axis between old and
new cities in the West and East.
More information about this series at

http://www.palgrave.com/series/14446
Miguel A. Martínez López
Editor
The Urban Politics of

Squatters’ Movements
Editor
Uppsala University
Uppsala, Sweden
The Contemporary City

ISBN 978-1-349-95313-4 ISBN 978-1-349-95314-1 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95314-1
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017959088
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This book is a result of the research project MOVOKEUR, ‘The Squatters’

Movement in Spain and Europe: Contexts, Cycles, Identities and
Institutionalisation’ #CSO2011-23079, funded by the Spanish Ministry of
Science and Innovation between 2012 and 2014. The resources provided
by this project triggered the collective work of research and publishing we
developed comparing squatting across European cities. The funds were very
helpful to support some of the researchers involved, even as the project
expanded considerably beyond the 2014 deadline. Two other collective
books, some academic papers, various conferences and the public display
of databases and maps (https://maps.squat.net/en/cities) also came out of
the same project, and we all benefitted from the contributions of many
colleagues, mostly SqEK (Squatting Europe Kollective, https://sqek.squat.
net/) affiliates. We express, then, our sincere gratitude to all the people who
participated in the full development of the MOVOKEUR project.
The following chapters are all written by SqEK members. Since 2009 we
have been meeting yearly in different European cities. An email list that
comprises more than 150 subscribers serves as a platform for general com-
munication in terms of solidarity and exchange of news, academic articles
and various PhD dissertations. This exceptional network of activist research
provides us with an exciting environment of cooperation and also with first-
hand insights. Hence, many of our accounts about squatting in Europe are
also substantially informed by the hundreds of participants in the SqEK
meetings and the local activists from each city where we met. This book is
thus made thanks to their invaluable hospitality, comments, analyses and
v
vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
data shared, sometimes face to face and informally, and other times through
formal interviews and access to their archives.
We must explicitly mention here the names of those who superbly
enhanced the overall quality of this volume by critically reviewing and
editing the different chapters—Salvatore Engel-Dimauro, Jacqueline
Feldman, Maija Jokela, Rowan Milligan, Alan Moore, Frank Morales,
Linus Owens, Gianni Piazza, Michaela Pixova, Dominika Polanska, Jake
Smith, Amy Starecheski, Travis Van Isacker, and Luke Yates. Members of
the research unit on the History of Political and Economic Thought at the
University of Aarhus also supplied feedback to a preliminary version of the
chapter about Barcelona. Bruno Cordone assisted the authors of the chapter
on Rome by administering questionnaires. Saray Hernández crucially
helped with the data collection for the case of Madrid. Their generous
cooperation was essential for enhancing the communicative capacity of
our ideas, especially given the international nature of SqEK and the fact
that most of us are non-native English speakers.
As the general editor of this book I also would like to thank Ray Forrest
(co-editor of this book series and also head of the Public Policy Department
in the City University of Hong Kong, my former institutional employer)
and the Palgrave staff for their support and patience despite the numerous
extensions of deadlines we had to apply for. Last but not least, my recent
affiliation to the IBF (Institute for Housing and Urban Research) at Upp-
sala University granted me a precious term off from teaching, which I
needed to complete this work. Regular discussions with colleagues from
the IBF now, and from Hong Kong, Madrid and other universities in the
past years were also inspiring and challenging every time I presented my
research on squatting.
CONTENTS
1 Introduction: The Politics of Squatting, Time Frames

and Socio-Spatial Contexts 1
Part I Case Studies 23
2 Socio-Spatial Structures and Protest Cycles of Squatted

Social Centres in Madrid 25
3 Squatting Cycles in Barcelona: Identities, Repression

and the Controversy of Institutionalisation 51
Galvão Debelle, Claudio Cattaneo, Robert González, Oriol
Barranco, and Marta Llobet
4 Shifting Socio-Spatial Contexts and the Space of Social

Movements: Squatting in Seville 75
Ibán Díaz-Parra and Miguel A. Martínez López
vii
viii CONTENTS
5 Occupations of Housing and Social Centers in Rome:

A Durable Resistance to Neoliberalism and
Institutionalization 99
Pierpaolo Mudu and Luisa Rossini
6 The Squatting Movement(s) in Paris: Internal Divides

and Conditions for Survival 121
Thomas Aguilera
7 The Cycles of Squatting in Berlin (1969–2016) 145

azozomox and Armin Kuhn
8 Cycles of the Copenhagen Squatter Movement: From

Slumstormer to BZ Brigades and the Autonomous
Movement 165
Tina Steiger
9 The Political Squatters’ Movement and Its Social

Centres in the Gentrifying City of Rotterdam 187
E.T.C. Dee
10 The Ebb and Flow of Resistance: The Squatters’

Movement and Squatted Social Centres in Brighton 209
E.T.C. Dee
Part II Comparisons 227
11 More than Four Decades of Squatting: Cycles,

Waves and Stages of Autonomous Urban Politics
in European Cities 229
Gianni Piazza and Miguel A. Martínez López
CONTENTS ix
12 Keep Your Piece of Cake, We’ll Squat the Bakery!

Autonomy Meets Repression and Institutionalisation 247
Luisa Rossini, azozomox, and Galvão Debelle
13 Squatted Social Centres and the Housing Question 271

Robert González, Ibán Díaz-Parra, and
Abbreviations 289
Index 291
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
Thomas Aguilera is Assistant Professor of political science at Sciences Po

Rennes-Arènes (UMR6051), Director of the Master Program Governing
Territorial Changes, associate researcher to the Chair Territories and Muta-
tions of Public Action, and member of the Cities are back in Town urban
research program of Sciences Po Paris. He holds a PhD in political science
from Sciences Po Paris (2015). His research interests include public policies,
urban governance, informal housing, social movements, sustainable devel-
opment in Europe and the regulation of tourism. He is the author of
Gouverner les illégalismes urbains. Les politiques publiques face aux squats et
aux bidonvilles dans les regions de Paris et de Madrid (2017). He has
published articles and book chapters on the governance of squats and
slums, and on the effects of squatting movements on urban policies in
Europe.
azozomox is an activist involved in various struggles against gentrification,

capitalism, patriarchy, racism, nationalism, and so forth, such as the
mobilisation against the G20 summit in Hamburg 2017. Latest publica-
tions: ‘Squatting and Diversity: Gender and Patriarchy in Berlin, Madrid
and Barcelona’ and (co-authored with Martínez, M.A. and Gil, J.)
‘Unavoidable Dilemmas: Squatters Dealing with the Law’ in Cattaneo,
C. and Martínez, M.A. (eds.) The Squatters’ Movement in Europe: Commons
and Autonomy as Alternatives to Capitalism (2014); ‘Besetzen im 21.
Jahrhundert, Die Häuser denen, die drin wohnen’ in Holm, A. (ed.),
Reclaim Berlin; ‘The Untold Struggles of Migrant Women Squatters and
xi
xii NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
the Occupations of Kottbusser Straße 8 and Forster Straße 16/17, Berlin-

Kreuzberg’ (co-authored with Duygu Gürsel) and ‘Narrating the Chal-
lenges of Women-Refugee Activists of Ohlauer Straße 12, International
Women’s Space, Berlin’ (co-authored with International Women’s Space)
in Mudu P. and Chattopadhyay, S. (eds.) Migration, Squatting and Radical
Autonomy (2017).
Oriol Barranco is a post-doctoral researcher at the Department of Sociol-

ogy, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB). He is member of Centre
d’Estudis Sociològics sobre la Vida Quotidina i el Treball (QUIT) – Institut
d’Estudis del Treball (IET), Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB).
He holds a PhD in Sociology from UAB and from the Ecole des Hautes

Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris (2010). His research focuses on the field
of sociology of labour domination and resistance, research methods, social
network analysis, and social movements.
Claudio Cattaneo is post-doctoral fellow at the Barcelona Institute of

Regional and Metropolitan Studies researching on the social metabolism
of agriculture. He holds a PhD in ecological economics with a focus on rural
and urban squatters. He has published several papers on the squatters’
movement from an ecological perspective and in relation to the degrowth
movement.
Galvão Debelle is a PhD graduate at the Department of Media, Commu-

nication and Culture, of the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB).
His research uses Critical Discourse Analysis to identify and compare media
discourses about property relationships before and after the financial crisis.
He has published in English (Interface journal) and French (French Media
Journal of Media Research) about the criminalisation of squatting.
E.T.C. Dee researches urban squatting and social centres. He has

published the following book chapters: (with Deanna Dadusc) ‘The
criminalisation of squatting: Discourses, moral panics and resistances in
the Netherlands, England and Wales’ in Hickey, O’Mahony & O’Mahony
(eds.) Moral Rhetoric and the Criminalisation of Squatting (2015); ‘The
Right to Decent Housing and A Whole Lot More Besides – Examining the
Modern English Squatters Movement at its Beginnings and in the Present
Day’ in Cattaneo & Martinez (eds.) The Squatters’ Movement in Europe:
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS xiii
Commons and Autonomy as Alternatives to Capitalism (2014); ‘Moving

towards criminalisation and then what? Examining discourses around squat-
ting in England’ in Squatting Europe Kollective (eds.) Squatting in Europe:
Radical Spaces, Urban Struggles (2013).
Ibán Díaz-Parra is post-doctoral researcher in the University of Seville.

He has been previously affiliated to the University of Buenos Aires and to
the National Autonomous University of Mexico. He focuses on urban
studies, especially gentrification, socio-spatial segregation and housing,
including housing movements and protest. Latest publications: (2016)
“Blurring the borders between old and new social movements: the M15
movement and the radical unions in Spain” Mediterránean politics; (2015)
Perspectivas del estudio de la gentrificación en México y América Latina (City
of Mexico: UNAM); (2015) ‘A back to the city movement by local gov-
ernment action: gentrification in Spain and Latin America’, International
Journal of Urban Science.
Robert González is currently professor and researcher in Political Science

and Public Administration at the Institute of Social Sciences and Human-
ities, Universidad Autónoma del Estado de Hidalgo (Mexico). He was
previously affiliated to the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. He has
been involved in both activism and research projects on the topics of
youth politics, social movements, citizen participation and public policy.
Latest publications: (2016) (co-authored with Alejandra Araiza)
‘Feminismo y okupación en España. El caso de la Eskalera Karakola’,
Sociológica; (2015) ‘El moviment per l’okupació i el moviment per
l’habitatge: semblances, diferències i confluències en temps de crisi’,
Recerca. Revista de Pensament i Anàlisi.
Armin Kuhn works as political advisor for the parliamentary group Die
Linke in the Bundestag (Berlin). He is interested in political theory, urban
studies and social movements. His publications include: Vom Häuserkampf
zur neoliberalen Stadt. Besetzungsbewegungen in Berlin und Barcelona (PhD
Thesis, 2014), ‘Squatting and Gentrification in East Germany Since 1989/
90’ (2016, with Andrej Holm), ‘Squatting and Urban Renewal in Berlin.
The interaction of squatter movements and strategies of urban
restructuring’ (2011, with Andrej Holm).
xiv NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
Marta Llobet is PhD in Sociology, lecturer at the University of Barcelona

and member of the Centre de recherche de Montréal sur les inégalités sociales
et les discriminations (CREMIS). Her research interests focus on social
intervention practices with vulnerable populations, community organisation
and social movements. She has carried out research on the squatters’
movement and the PAH (Platform for People Affected by Mortgages) in
Spain and especially in Catalonia. She is interested in the role of such
practices in the reduction of social inequalities through innovation and
social creativity.
Miguel A. Martínez López is Professor of Housing and Urban Sociology

at the IBF (Institute for Housing and Urban Research), University of
Uppsala (Sweden). He was previously affiliated to the City University of
Hong Kong and the Complutense University of Madrid (Spain). In addi-
tion to his involvement in various social movements, he has researched on
participatory-activist methodologies, urban planning, housing, citizen par-
ticipation and grassroots mobilisations. Latest publications: (2016)
‘Between Autonomy and Hybridity: Urban Struggles within the 15M
Movement in Madrid’ in Margit Mayer, Catharina Th€ orn and HåkanTh€ orn
(eds.). Urban Uprisings: Challenging the Neoliberal City in Europe; (2017)
‘Squatters and migrants in Madrid: Interactions, contexts and cycles’,
Urban Studies; (2014) SqEK, (co-edited with Claudio Cattaneo) The
Squatters’ Movement in Europe: Commons and Autonomy as Alternatives
to Capitalism.
Pierpaolo Mudu is PhD in Geography and collaborates with the

programmes Urban Studies and Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences at the
University of Washington, Tacoma (USA). Latest publications: (2017)
(co-edited with Sutapa Chattopadhyay) Migration, Squatting and Radical
Autonomy; (2014) ‘Self-managed Social Centers and the right to urban
space’ in Isabella Clough Marinaro & Bjørn Thomassen (eds.) Global
Rome; (2014) ‘Ogni sfratto sarà una barricata: squatting for housing and
social conflict in Rome’ in SqEK, Claudio Cattaneo & Miguel Martínez
(eds.) The squatters’ movement in Europe. He is also the editor of a special
symposium published by the journal Antipode on the Italian squatting and
“occupy” practices.
Gianni Piazza holds a PhD in Political Science at the University of Flor-

ence. Currently he is Associate Professor of Political Sociology at the
University of Catania (Italy) and the associate editor of the scientific journal
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS xv
Partecipazione e Conflitto. His publications focus on local government and

politics, public policy analysis, social movements, territorial and environ-
mental conflicts, and squatted social centres. He is the author of La città
degli affari (1994) and Sindaci e politiche in Sicilia (1998); co-author of
Politiche e partecipazione (2004), Voices of the Valley, Voices of the Straits
(2008), Le ragioni del no (2008); and co-editor of Alla ricerca dell’Onda
(2010). He has edited the special issue ‘Il movimento delle occupazioni di
squat e centri sociali in Europa’, Partecipazione e Conflitto (2012).
Luisa Rossini is PhD in Urban and Regional Planning from University of

Palermo (Italy) and the Technical University of Berlin (Germany). Her
research focuses on cases of insurgent reappropriation and reclaiming of
urban public spaces. She works as a freelance researcher. Latest publications:
‘Resistere al “tramonto della città pubblica”: metodi di inclusione dei
processi di (ri)appropriazione dello spazio pubblico’ in La Ricerca Che
Cambia; “Reclaiming public spaces’: identificazione di strategie e metodi
per la partecipazione dei cittadini nella produzione e gestione di spazi
pubblici”, Urbanistica Informazioni.
Tina Steiger has a Master’s Degree in Urban Studies from the UNICA
4Cities Urban Studies Program and holds a Bachelor Degree in Political
Science from the University of Florida. Based in Copenhagen, she has
worked as a graduate assistant at the HafenCity Universität Hamburg, as
well as an external lecturer at Copenhagen University’s Department of Arts
and Cultural Studies. She is involved in a number of projects engaging in
cultural exchanges and radical politics in Copenhagen and Hamburg.
LIST OF FIGURES
Fig. 2.1 Number of new and active Squatted Social Centres per year.
Madrid, 1977–2015 (Source: Author) 30
Fig. 2.2 Percentage of Squatted Social Centres according to location.
Madrid, 1977–2015 (Source: Author) 36
Fig. 3.1 Average number of open and active SSCs per year (stock) in
the Barcelona Metropolitan Area, 1977–2013 (Source: Authors) 55
Fig. 3.2 Newly occupied and evicted SSCs per year (flows) in the
Barcelona Metropolitan Area, 1977–2013 (Source: Authors) 55
Fig. 4.1 Weight of employment in the construction sector. Spain,
1970–2014 (Source: National Institute of Statistics
(Government of Spain)) 87
Fig. 4.2 Unemployment rate in Spain and Andalusia, 2002–2014
(Source: National Institute of Statistics (Government of Spain)) 88
Fig. 4.3 Mortgage foreclosures in Spain, 2007–2014 (Source: National
Institute of Statistics (Government of Spain)) 88
Fig. 4.4 Distribution of squats in Seville, 1970–2015 (Source: Authors) 91
Fig. 5.1 Active SSCs by time period. Rome, 1986–2015 (Source:
Authors) 102
Fig. 5.2 SSCs by administrative borough. Rome, 1986–2015 (Source:
Authors) 103
Fig. 5.3 Four different cases of squatting practices in Rome, 1986–2015
(Source: Authors) 112
Fig. 6.1 Number of squats in Paris and its immediate suburbs, 1949–2014
(Source: Author (Data are not exhaustive. They come from
different sources: for the period before 2000 I used archives, press
xvii
xviii LIST OF FIGURES
reviews and works of historians (Colin 2005; Péchu 2010).

For the 2000s I collected data with interviews and press review)) 124
Fig. 6.2 Types of squats per sequences. Paris, 1949–2014 (Source:
Author) 129
Fig. 8.1 Squats and self-managed social centers in Copenhagen,
1963–2013 (Source: Author) 172
Fig. 8.2 Squatting cycles by district. Copenhagen, 1963–2013 (Source:
Author) 182
Fig. 9.1 Districts of Rotterdam (Source: Gemeente Rotterdam (2014)
(information publicly available at http://www.rotterdam.nl/
gebiedscommissies)) 190
Fig. 9.2 Social centres by borough. Rotterdam, 1970–2013 (Source:
Author & BLUBS (Blijdorp Uitzonderlijke Bureau Statistiek)) 191
Fig. 9.3 Social centres by type of space. Rotterdam, 1970–2013 (Source:
Fig. 10.1 Social centres by time period. Brighton, 1980–2013 (Source:
Fig. 10.2 Social centres by time ward. Brighton, 1980–2013 (Source:
Fig. 11.1 Squatting cycles-stages in four South European cities, 1960s–2010s
(Source: Authors. Notes based on dates and names given by the
authors of the chapters. Madrid: 1a (1977–mid-1980s) ‘early
squatters’; 1b (mid-1980s–1990) ‘initiators’; 1c (1990–1995)
‘before criminalisation’. 2a (1996–mid-2000s) ‘after
criminalisation’; 2b (mid-2000s–2010) ‘metropolitan expansion’.
3a 2011–2015 ‘global crisis–15M’, Barcelona: 1 (1977–1995)
‘birth and consolidation’; 1a (1977–mid-1980s) ‘citizen
movement’; 1b (mid-1980s–1995) ‘anarchist/transnational
perspective’. 2a (1996–2000) ‘golden age’; 2b (2001–2005)
‘maturity’; 2c (2006–2010) ‘bifurcation’. 3a (2011–2015)
‘15M and austerity’. Seville: 1a (1977–mid–1980s)
‘neighbourhood associations’; 1b (1991–1995) ‘autonomist
squatters’. 2a (2001–2010) ‘anti-global squatters’. 3a
(2011–2015) ‘15M and squatting for housing’, Rome: 1a
(1960–mid-1970s) ‘squatting for housing’; 1b (mid-1970s–
late1970s) ‘early SSCs; 1c (mid-1980s–1989) ‘first wave SSCs’.
2a (1990–2000) ‘students vs. university reform’; 2b
(2001–2007) ‘after Genoa anti-G8’. 3a (2008–2015) ‘financial
crisis and Tsunami Tour’.) 235
LIST OF FIGURES xix
Fig. 11.2 Squatting cycles-stages in three Central-North European cities,

1960s–2010s (Source: Authors. Notes based on dates and names
given by the authors of the chapters: Paris: 1a (1945–1970)
‘pioneering housing movements’; 1b (1971–1980) ‘autonomous-
radical squatting’. 2a (1981–1990) ‘artist squatting emergence’; 2b
(1991–1999) ‘squatting for housing–DAL, JN’. 3a (2000–2014)
‘artists’ squatting hegemony’, Berlin: 1a (late 1960s–1970s) ‘early
squatting’. 2a (1979–1984) ‘first big wave’; 2b (1989–1991)
‘second big wave–fall of the Wall’. 3a (1992–2016) ‘aftermath and
decline’, Copenhagen: 1a (1963–1979) ‘Slumstormer–
Christiania’. 2a (1980–1982) ‘Initiv-gruppen, early BZ Brigades’;
2b (1983–1993) ‘late ZB Movement and International issues’. 3a
(1994–2006) ‘Defensive, Disintegrated and emerging
autonomous movement’; 3b (2007–2014) ‘submerged
autonomous networks claiming spaces’) 242
LIST OF TABLES
Table 2.1 Duration of Squatted Social Centres in Madrid, 1977–2015 29

Table 2.2 Location of Squatted Social Centres in Madrid, 1977–2015 35
Table 2.3 Type of building of Squatted Social Centres in Madrid,
1977–2015. Percentages 40
Table 2.4 Property of Squatted Social Centres in Madrid, 1977–2015.
Percentages 40
Table 2.5 Squatted Social Centres, protest cycles and socio-spatial
structures in Madrid, 1977–2015 45
Table 3.1 Protest cycles, socio-spatial structures and SSCs in Barcelona
metropolitan area, 1977–2015 65
Table 4.1 Socio-spatial structures and the space of the squatters’
movement in Seville, 1977–2015 93
Table 5.1 Squatting in Rome, 2000–2014 105
Table 6.1 Type of squats, strength of the squatting movement,
reactions to squatting and contexts. Paris, 1870–2014 134
Table 9.1 Social centres by time period. Rotterdam, 1970–2013 192
Table 10.1 Squats by type of space. Brighton, 1980–2013 217
Table 10.2 Squats by ward. Brighton, 1980–2013 222
Table 13.1 SSCs and housing in European cities according to cycles
and configurations, 1960s–2010s 281
xxi
CHAPTER 1
Introduction: The Politics of Squatting, Time

Frames and Socio-Spatial Contexts
Miguel A. Martı́nez López
The unlawful practice of squatting vacant buildings without the owner’s

permission again came to the fore in 2008, in the aftermath of the global
financial crisis. Not surprisingly, higher numbers of unpaid mortgages,
procedures of foreclosure and home evictions awakened the attention
of the media in affluent and increasingly polarised societies where
homeownership and financialisation were on the rise. Even though not
uncommon in previous years, squatting was earlier usually considered an
invisible and marginal phenomenon, but increasing rates and prominence of
squatting in Western cities came to represent a visible indicator of the
economic recession.
This last crisis of capitalism did not come all of a sudden. It followed from
the devastating effects of neoliberal policies in place since the 1980s which
curtailed housing benefits and privatised social housing stocks, among
others (Mayer 2016). European Union authorities dictated austerity poli-
cies and enforced them on some state members with financial troubles
(Spain, Portugal, Greece, Ireland, and Italy), even after some of these had
experienced a decade of spectacular economic growth (in particular, Spain
and Ireland). The same medicine of cutbacks, privatisation, deregulation
M.A. Martínez López (*)

IBF (Institute for Housing and Urban Research), University of Uppsala,
Uppsala, Sweden
© The Author(s) 2018 1

M.A. Martínez López (ed.), The Urban Politics of Squatters’
Movements, The Contemporary City,
https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95314-1_1
2 M.A. MARTÍNEZ LÓPEZ
and commodification of all kinds of goods and services (Lazzarato 2012)

had been administrated by the IMF (International Monetary Fund) and the
WB (World Bank) to Latin American and Asian countries in previous
decades, with poor egalitarian results (Davis 2006). At the same time, the
free flows of international capital targeting the sovereign debt of the weakest
countries were also involved in massive investments in global real estate
speculation and financialisation (via mortgages) (Lapavitsas 2013, ch. 9),
which was behind most of the processes of urban renewal, redevelopment
and gentrification that expelled the poor, the precariat and the working
classes from the core of urban life (Slater 2015). Spatial segregation and
unaffordable housing affect migrants and refugees too, especially after the
emergency waves of migrants of 2015 (Mudu and Chattopadhyay 2017).
The combined effect was an increase in homeless people and marginalised
groups seeing squatting as a feasible and reasonable last resort, regardless of
its legal implications.
The social and political history of squatting, however, is not very well
known. The occupation of buildings has been an enduring practice in many
European cities over the past four decades, although each case has its own
rhythms and forms of expression. Sometimes squatting is a reaction to the
hardships mentioned above, but it is also a well-established repertoire of
political protest by youth and leftist-anarchist movements. Any attempt to
unveil the history of squatting must first deal with the challenges of media
stereotypes and criminal prosecution. Secondly, squatting practices must be
defined and demarcated. Slums (squatted settlements) can be confused with
the occupation of empty buildings, but it is also a productive theoretical
challenge to investigate similarities (Aguilera and Smart 2016). Thirdly,
internal diversity within all forms of squatting in terms of social composition
and motives needs to be clarified for external observers and commentators.
Fourthly, local and historical variations also deserve more careful analysis
beyond the simplistic characterisation of squatting as an illegal behaviour—
especially because, under particular circumstances, squatting has also been
legally accepted, regulated and normalised (Ward 2002), in the form of
‘adverse possession’ (Fox et al. 2015) as the rehousing of slum dwellers
(Neuwirth 2006) demonstrates, not to mention the legalisation of particu-
lar squats in many European cities as we will see in the following chapters.
In this collective research we assume that all squatting has relevant
political implications. Although many squatters’ primary motive is simply
to meet their own housing needs, they tend to be supported by social
organisations with a specific political agenda. Even individual and
INTRODUCTION: THE POLITICS OF SQUATTING, TIME FRAMES AND. . . 3
clandestine practices of squatting with no connection to politically aimed

groups may be interpreted as a reaction or contestation to the economic
inequality engendered by capitalism and the political parties that sustain
it. There are also squatting practices that remain covert for some time until
activists run campaigns and establish multiple networks of solidarity to resist
evictions (Martínez 2016). Squatted Social Centres (SSCs) of various kinds
and ideological orientations, sometimes in combination with housing, rep-
resent the most visible expression of political squatting. SSCs are thus the
public face of squatters as a protest movement (Martínez 2013). They make
political demands related to the occupied buildings, the urban areas where
they operate and urban policies at large. In addition to their critique of
mainstream urban politics and capitalism, squatters active in SSCs develop a
creative side (Holloway 2010)—self-management of their collective
resources, direct democracy, non-commercial activities, and more egalitar-
ian relationships than in the mainstream daily life. Squatters had long been
responding to financial and speculative dynamics of capital in European
cities, to housing shortages and to the limitations of housing policies, for
several decades before the burst of the recent financial bubbles.
Such generalisations should not prevent us from detailed analyses of how
contexts and squatters’ practices evolve. Furthermore, we need to take into
account how squatters see themselves, which is not always as part of a
specific urban movement, as well as how are they seen by others. The
occasional phenomena of fascist SSCs and the business of selling and renting
out occupied buildings, for example, indicate that not all forms of squatting
contest the reproduction of the capitalist city. Even when squatters’ move-
ments hold a progressive or left-libertarian view, their internal controversies
about their relationship with the authorities (Martínez 2014), with other
movements and with their surrounding neighbourhoods, suggest no taken-
for-granted developments or outcomes. Some researchers point to internal
contradictions, cleavages and discriminatory behaviours among some
groups of squatters (azozomox 2014; Kadir 2014). Corporate reactions
to the spread of squatters can also reinvigorate the criminalisation of home-
lessness and the securitisation of property, which results, for example, in
anti-squatting companies (Dadusc and Dee 2015; Manjikian 2013).
This volume thus intends to shed light on the development of squatting
practices and movements in nine European cities by examining the num-
bers, variations and significant contexts in their life course. We aim to reveal
how and why squatting practices shifted and to what extent they engen-
dered urban movements. The contributors have measured the volume and
changes in squatting over various decades as accurately as possible according

to the available data, mostly by focusing on SSCs. These accounts are more
exhaustive than previous research, but still the slippery nature of squatting
requires broad estimates and interpretations. Furthermore, we do not
believe numbers of squats speak for themselves. They are no more than
one statistical manifestation of multiple social practices within opportunity
and constraining structures. We therefore need to distinguish them, select
the most significant ones, trace the social relations that link them all and
propose a meaningful understanding of the whole. Our main advantage is
that many of us are insiders in the field (we squatted or participated in
squats), and we have frequently discussed our views with other squatters.
SqEK (Squatting Europe Kollective) has been the activist-research network
that allowed us to exchange information, visit squats all over Europe and
meet regularly, which forged an inspiring ground to supplement our own
investigations of squatting. This volume also continues a series of four
preceding books (Cattaneo and Martínez 2014; Moore and Smart 2015;
Mudu and Chattopadhyay 2017; SqEK 2013), one edited journal (https://
www.trespass.network/) and various special issues in academic journals (for
example, Piazza 2012; Polanska and Martínez 2016), each publication
focused on a particular topic and theoretical emphasis. Here we attempt
to compare systematically the cycles, contexts and practices of squatting
in nine selected cities (Madrid, Barcelona, Seville, Rome, Paris, Berlin,
Copenhagen, Rotterdam and Brighton). In the next sections I present the
framework of concepts and debates that underpin this perspective.
ARTICULATIONS BETWEEN AGENCY AND STRUCTURE

Research on squatting commenced with some pioneering works (Bailey
1973; Corr 1999; Koopmans 1995; Mayer 1993; Priemus 1983; Wates
and Wolmar 1980), but many case studies followed in the early 2000s
(Adell and Martínez 2004; Mikkelsen and Karpantschof 2001; Martínez
2002; Mudu 2004; Pruijt 2003; Ruggiero 2000) and later on, especially
from 2010 onwards. Overall assessments based on comparisons across
Europe have seldom incited researchers. Some authors highlighted that
besides the provision of shelter, the practice of squatting may serve other
combined or alternative purposes such as setting up counter-cultural and
political venues, the preservation of threatened built heritage and urban
areas, and the development of environmentally friendly and anti-capitalist
lifestyles (Martínez 2013; Pruijt 2013a). It has also been noted that
squatters follow a cross-national pattern of DIY (do-it-yourself) and

non-exploitative practices that paved the way for small-scale alternatives to
capitalism despite the backlash against the squatters’ movements in many
European cities (Martínez and Cattaneo 2014, p. 245). A concise historical
review of squatting in both Western and Eastern Europe has pointed to the
opportunities for squatting-autonomous movements from specific sociopo-
litical systems, welfare regimes, ownership regimes and urban restructuring
(Steen et al. 2014, pp. 6, 15–16), although it fails to recognise the transna-
tional connections between North and South European squatters’
movements.
One strand of research about squatting predominantly focuses on the
squatters’ agency and identity issues. This occurs, for instance, with the
insiders’ narrations of events within Amsterdam’s squatting scene (Adilkno
1990), the ulterior interpretations of its decline according to the activists’
‘narratives, strategies, identities and emotions’ (Owens 2009, p. 18) and the
analysis of everyday practices and attitudes that debunk prevailing myths
and stereotypes (Kadir 2014). Closely linked to them, constructivist
approaches aim at disclosing the discursive strategies that different actors
(journalists, politicians, academics, think tanks, NGOs, squatters, etc.) per-
form and their effects in terms of ‘cultural wars’ and ‘revanchist politics’
(Pruijt 2013b), ‘securitisation policies’ (Manjikian 2013) and mass media
criminalisation (Dee and Debelle 2015). Ethnographic insights from home-
less migrants who squat (Bouillon 2009) and from squatters engaged in the
politics of migration (Mudu and Chattopadhyay 2017), the cultural and
ideological framings of political squatting (Moore and Smart 2015), and the
squatters’ ‘legal wisdom’ (Finchett-Maddock 2014) also crucially involve
the dimensions of subjectivity, symbolic interactions and forms of represen-
tation (De Moor 2016).
Another strand of research pays more attention to the structures, con-
texts and external conditions that constrain the development of squatters’
movements. Far from deterministic approaches such as those in which every
social practice is a mere expression of dominant values, material distribu-
tions of resources and legal stipulations, most of these studies explore the
articulation of squatters’ agency with social, political and spatial contexts
(Cattaneo and Martínez 2014; Dee 2014; Holm and Khun 2010;
Koopmans 1995; Mayer 1993; Pruijt 2003; Mudu 2004; Piazza and
Genovese 2016; Polanska and Piotrowski 2015; Steen et al. 2014). Squat-
ters mobilise as an organised and collective response to those contexts, but
they also mobilise their subjective aspirations, their symbolic and material
resources, and their alliances with other social movements and groups. They
do this in a strategic manner—that is to say, actions are decided according to
the evaluation of the existing circumstances and performed within their
boundaries—not as a mechanical or direct reaction to particular grievances.
The different ways squatting is used as a means of protest (alternative
housing, emergency shelter, artistic venues, SSCs, etc.) show that there
are significant conditions that may affect activists. Additionally, variations
of strength and membership over time suggest external influences can also
hinder squatters’ capacities. Despite being able to name common traits of
squatters’ movements across Europe, we must acknowledge, too, the dif-
ferences in the structural contexts they face.
As Koopmans (1995, pp. 9, 149) notes: ‘The development of social
movements is best understood by focusing on the availability of political
opportunities for mobilization, rather than on the intensity of grievances
among their constituencies, or on their organizational strength and
resources. . . . The theory must consider why, within the constraints set by
their environments, social movement activists consciously choose one strat-
egy and not another.’ Opportunities for mobilisation may stem from struc-
tures other than the political—social, spatial, economic and cultural.
Moreover, activists’ agency entails strategic choices and actions as well as
social networks in which they become empowered—allies, opponents,
recruits, sympathisers, supporters, and so on. Accordingly, this book inves-
tigates the articulation of socio-spatial and political opportunities for squat-
ting, on the one hand, and the squatters’ strategic choices, on the other,
with the number of effective squats one of their most salient outcomes. We
add a historical perspective by borrowing the notion of ‘protest cycles’ in
order to understand how structure–agency articulations fluctuate over time.
PROTEST CYCLES
The notion of ‘protest cycle’ usually refers to specific periods of time when
different social movements, organisations and conflicts intensely challenge
the political order—without necessarily ending up in a revolution (Tarrow
1994, p. 263). Increased numbers of people participating in collective
action and innovative repertoires of protest are features of every wave of
mobilisation. The main traits of protest cycles or waves are the following:
‘heightened conflict, broad sectoral and geographical extension, the appear-
ance of new social movement organisations and the empowerment of old
ones, the creation of new “master frames” of meaning and the invention of
new forms of collective action’ (Tarrow 1995, p. 92). In their metaphorical

meaning, ‘wave’ relates to the rise and fall of protests as a whole, while
‘cycle’ implies the return of periods of many protests after periods on
the wane.
This social movements approach focuses on the time frames of general-
ised disorder when the magnitude of protest remains above the average
compared to other periods and their decline (Kriesi et al. 1995, p. 113). It
does not deal with ‘short-term fluctuations’ or the ‘development of single
movements’, but with ‘large-scale protest waves whose intensity, scope and
longevity force members of the national polity to take sides’ (Kriesi et al.
1995, p. 113). However, nothing prevents likewise examining cycles for
particular movements. The protest cycle approach promises to reveal the
ties between the movement under observation and other social movements.
Thus, as we will show in the coming chapters, many authors prefer to
distinguish periods, phases, stages or ‘internal life-cycles’ of the squatting
movement, when its relation with wider protest cycles is not evident.
Notwithstanding the above, the terms ‘cycle’ and ‘waves’ are still frequently
used when observers are able to identify peaks and valleys of the movement
activity in relation to influential contexts. Assuming these warnings, the
protest cycles approach enables us to understand the changing manifesta-
tions of social movements according to other movements and (mainly)
political contexts. This is particularly important for the analysis of squatting
given its often-underground development which makes it harder to recog-
nise its long history of accumulated experiences. An excessive concentration
on the movement itself might miss essential content of its mobilisation and
its specific singularity within the whole set of protest events, mobilisations
and contextual conditions simultaneously at play.
According to Kriesi et al. (1995, pp. 117–119), protest waves tend to last
from 10 to 15 years. Tactical innovations occur in the early stages, peak
development and conflicts are present towards the middle or during the last
half of the cycle, and movements decline in terms of radicalisation when
they face dilemmas regarding their institutionalisation and the split-up of
their SMOs (Social Movement Organisations). In the European cases
(Germany, Netherlands and Italy) studied by Kriesi and colleagues, squat-
ting appeared as one of the most confrontational and innovative tactics until
they were tamed by the state powers.
Similarly, Koopmans (1995, pp. 148–155) suggests a model of protest
cycle analysis with an initial phase followed by the expansion and growth of
the protests, which would lead to their weakening or even disappearance.
For him, the categories of ‘novelty’, ‘size’ and ‘militancy’ would define the
components of agency in each phase, while ‘facilitation’, ‘repression’ and
‘chances of success’ would be the structural dimensions that interplay with
the movements’ agency. Initially, ‘novelty is the most important base of
power. Because the public at large is not yet mobilized, pioneer movements
attract few participants. . . . Violence is also not an attractive option because
the public and the media have serious moral objections’ (Koopmans 1995,
p. 150). Squatting is thus considered one of the novel, unconventional and
confrontational forms of protests that can spark protest cycles. In the phases
of expansion and growth, more formal and professional SMOs tend to take
the lead because they have more sustained resources such as members and
funding, their leaders are more identifiable and their actions more predict-
able for the media and the authorities. In these phases, ‘tactical innovations
like site occupation and squatting lose their ability to surprise, are no longer
attractive to the media, and authorities learn to deal with such actions more
effectively’ (Koopmans 1995, p. 151). From there movements could only
move forward by relying on increased numbers, increased militancy, strong
identities or strong alliances with established political actors. This is the
period when movements are more likely to split ‘over strategy, and the
moderate and radical wings are increasingly separated’ (Koopmans 1995,
p. 152) and the dilemmas between institutionalisation and radicalisation
usually end up with the decline of the protests and movements.
As our case studies reveal, squatters’ movements in many European cities
do not fit perfectly well in Kriesi’s and Koopman’s models. Its long duration
throughout various decades and its different alignment with protest cycles
demands special attention to the ways it expands, vanishes or survives. The
boundaries of internal cycles of the movement may be defined by alliances
with other movements, economic cycles, urban dynamics and diverse social
compositions of the squatters’ movement.
Owens (2009), for example, argued that any ‘objective decline’ is
inserted necessarily into a narrative where some events are interpreted as
signs of decline, even immediately after the early defeats, and some others
as continuous success, even at the late phases. In the case of Amsterdam’s
squatting movement, ‘the cultural side of the movement grew dramati-
cally in the 90s, as the movement’s centre moved towards larger cultural
centers . . .[and] explicit political activities in the movement waned’
(Owens 2009, p. 39). According to him, this shift is explained by the
placeless and increasingly globally bound connections of radical politics in
the city, without assuming any inherent tendency to fade out within the
movement.
The rise of the alter-globalisation movement in the late 1990s and the
transnational contestation to the Iraq war in 2003 (Scholl 2012) indicate
how European squatters became more involved in protest cycles beyond
their own cities. This, in turn, reinforced their resilience in Italy (Mudu
2004) and Spain (Martínez 2007) or animated the focus on squatted and
autonomous non-squatted social centres in the UK (Hodkinson and
Chatterton 2006; Chatterton 2010) and Poland (Piotrowski 2014).
Regarding the temporal discontinuities of squatting movements in West-
ern and Eastern European cities, Steen et al. (2014, pp. 9–13) compare first
the social movements of 1968 and the ‘youth revolts’ of the 1980s: ‘Instead
of pacifist 1960s flower children or radical activists fighting for a certain
victory, disenchanted and disillusioned youths with ‘no future’ rose up.
. . . The revolting youth seemed to have lost faith in society: in the welfare
state, political parties, the economy, the trade unions, popular culture, etc.
The denounced grand political programs and the idea of (workers’) revo-
lution and instead sought to establish small, liberated islands for experi-
ments with autonomy and self-management’ (Steen et al. 2014, p. 9).
Conversely, Katsiaficas (2006, pp. 1–9) observes more continuity between
the New Left of the 1960s and the autonomous movements of the 1980s
and 1990s in Central Europe. Although he does not examine similar
developments in Spain, France and UK, for example, squatters and other
autonomous activists belong to a long-term wave of antisystemic move-
ments who ‘seek to change governments as well as everyday life, to over-
throw capitalism and patriarchy’ (Katsiaficas 2006, p. 8).
Steen et al. identify cycles of squatting according to decades (1960s,
1970s, 1980s, 1990s and 2000s) and the predominant cultural content of
each cycle (optimism/pessimism, theoretically-oriented/action-oriented,
hippies/punks, pacifism/militantism). They only mention state repression
(‘the growing strength of the police apparatus that often made the 1980s
tactics seem obsolete’: Steen et al. 2014, p. 13) and the links with the alter-
globalisation movement in the 1990s and 2000s as explanations of the
shifting cycles (Flesher and Cox 2013). Although I agree with their general
assessment about the capacity of the alter-globalisation movement to syn-
chronise squatting and autonomous struggles all over Europe, repression is
just one of the various aspects of the political process and other contextual
circumstances that influenced the short life cycles of squatting in each city.
Koopmans (1995, pp. 170–173), for example, describes the origins of the
Berlin squatters’ movement according to the process of radicalisation of

both national (anti-nuclear campaigns) and local (citizens’ initiatives critical
with urban renewal plans) struggles once moderate demands and conven-
tional repertoires of protest did not achieve much success. In particular, he
points first to the political instability of the Berlin Senate in the early 1980s
and their inconsistent, hesitant and contradictory responses to the
radicalisation of squatters (Koopmans 1995, p. 175). Eventually, the inter-
actions between squatters and authorities were marked by concessions,
legalisations and harsh repression to the radical wings that concluded with
the ‘terminal institutionalisation’ (Pruijt 2003) of the movement. However,
Koopmans was not able to follow up the cyclical resurgence of the move-
ment due to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, this time without internal
splits about the issue of legalisation but ending up in another long period of
institutionalisation and calm. In the following chapter we will see that the
ups and downs of squatting in Berlin are more the exception than the rule,
although the analytical insights provided by Koopmans are very valuable to
identify key opportunities and constraints for the development of squatting.
SOCIO-SPATIAL STRUCTURES
Concerning the notions of ‘contexts’ other than the political process, and
‘socio-spatial structures’ the literature is not very explicit. The latter is hardly
mentioned as such (Soja 1980, p. 208; Nicholls 2011, p. 192) but can be
defined as the sets of relationships resulting out of processes of social
construction of space and time. These processes are driven by the dominant
configurations of class, ethnicity and gender, among other social divides.
Socio-spatial structures are not merely the spatial distribution of social
groups, but also the configurations adopted by the production, conception
and transformation of spaces and places. As Harvey (1996, p. 231) points
out, ‘the social constitution of spatio-temporality cannot be divorced from
value creation or, for that matter, from discourses, power relations, mem-
ory, institutions, and the tangible forms of material practices through which
human societies perpetuate themselves.’ Political interactions, thus, would
be an essential component of socio-spatial structures. Therefore, urban
movements participate in the creation of socio-spatial structures but are
also constrained by them. Opposition to the dominant socio-spatial struc-
tures and the intention to change them is expressed within the opportunities
and possibilities of the political, economic, social and cultural environment
in which movements operate.
In applying this perspective to our subject, instead of conceiving every

squatted building as the outcome of the sole decision of activists (agency) or
the volume of squats in every period as the mere sum of individual cases
(elements), we should explain the broader relations and process that pro-
duce such outputs. For example, the interactions of squatters with the
housing market, the urban plans, the local and supralocal authorities, and
the community organisations in a particular urban area would shed more
light on the variations of squatting than just the estimation of the housing
needs or the activists’ intentions. Housing vacancy and housing policies are
two of the main socio-spatial conditions that facilitate or constrain squatting
but can hardly explain the rise and lifespan of a squatters’ movement
without considering activists’ strategic choices according to a broader polit-
ical and urban environment.
Some theoretical proposals emphasise the ‘polymorphy of socio-spatial
relations’ (Jessop et al. 2008, p. 396) and argue for an articulation of
‘structuring principles’ such as territory, place, scale and networks. In a
similar vein, Pickvance (2003, p. 105) calls for ‘the concentration on the
political context in which urban movements developed. This recognized
that urban movements are not spontaneous responses to objective inequal-
ities or deprivations but form more easily under certain social and political
conditions than others.’ For him there are relevant contextual conditions
that favour or constrain the movement’s capacity: the process of urbanisa-
tion itself, the state intervention on collective consumption (including the
co-optation and the funding of civic organisations), and the general eco-
nomic and social conditions (due to the cyclical occurrence of crises and
periods of relative affluence and growth) (Pickvance 1985, pp. 40–44).
Mayer (2006, 2016) pointed out the context of economic globalisation
that has transformed urban politics due to city-branding strategies, the
construction of mega-projects, shrinking municipal budgets, the
outsourcing of public services and the competition between cities for
attracting capital investment. As she indicates, this ‘is the political and
socio-spatial environment which has reconfigured the fault lines that furnish
both opportunities and constraints for social movements’ (Mayer 2006,
p. 204). Nevertheless, movement activities also shape this framework.
Therefore, both the activists’ consciousness and tactics should be consid-
ered in order to explain their outcomes (Fainstein and Hirst 1995, p. 198).
Similarly, social movements scholars define ‘political opportunity struc-
tures’ (POS) by highlighting the openness of, or access to, state institutions,
the cohesion of the elites, state repression, political alliances, media coverage
and recognition, and, for some, also the subjective perception of those
opportunities and constraints by the social groups involved (Tarrow 1994;
McAdam 1996; Meyer 2004). As far as I know, there are only a few
attempts to bridge the above conceptions in the research of urban move-
ments (Franzén 2005; Jacobsson 2015; Nicholls et al. 2013; Weinstein and
Ren 2009) apart from the works already mentioned about squatting
(Cattaneo and Martínez 2014; Dee 2014; Holm and Khun 2010;
Koopmans 1995; Mayer 1993; Pruijt 2003; Mudu 2004; Piazza and
Genovese 2016; Polanska and Piotrowski 2015; Steen et al. 2014).
Some authors focus on the specific urban renewal regimes and housing
policies in order to assess the evolution of every squatting movement in
particular cities. This is what Pruijt (2003, 2014) argued in his comparisons
between Amsterdam and New York. In contrast to the prevailing assump-
tions in most social movements studies, the long duration of urban squat-
ting, especially for housing and counter-cultural purposes, is explained by
Pruijt (2013a, p. 50) according to Castells’ (1983) claim that squatters
satisfy collective consumption and promote the city as a use value against
commodification which, in turn, would not entail a specific expiry date.
Notwithstanding, Pruijt admits that ‘political squatting’ and ‘conservational
squatting’ follow a more classic life dynamics of evolution with
radicalisation, institutionalisation, co-optation and identity loss at their
ending stages. This fate would not apply so easily to ‘squatting as an
alternative housing strategy’ and to ‘entrepreneurial squatting’ because
‘squatting has the unique property of combining self-help with demonstrat-
ing an alternative and a potential for protest’ (Pruijt 2013a, p. 50). How-
ever, since SSCs frequently combine political and ‘entrepreneurial’ traits
(and, often, residential functions too) no regular pattern could be deduced
from Pruijt’s assumptions.
For Holm and Kuhn the long-term dynamics of the squatters’ movement
in Berlin was determined, above all, by the ‘broader urban political context’
(2010, p. 644). Thus, they unveil how squatting underscored different
urban struggles among or independently from other urban movements
while facing urban restructuring plans, the housing shortage, property
speculation and the displacement of low-income residents. Again, legislative
shifts that made squatting subject to a more effective prosecution and
crucial political events such as the unification of Eastern and Western
Germany, shaped the urban protest cycles. Interestingly, a higher repression
of squatting in Berlin radicalised its most autonomist branch but did not
result in new occupations.
Owens also argues that the changing urban context constrained the
development of squatting in Amsterdam: ‘While the housing situation
improved, the opportunities for squatting simultaneously shrank. . . . With
the urban renewal projects of the city centre complete, fewer buildings were
being emptied. . . . Owners developed new strategies to keep their houses in
use, such as the kraakwacht (squat watch). Finally, the city was no longer
experiencing a population exodus’ (Owens 2009, p. 226). Even more,
squatters faced new legal threats when squatting was made a criminal
offence in 2010 (Pruijt 2013b; Dadusc and Dee 2015) which adds to the
above-mentioned socio-spatial constraints.
Ownership regimes and especially the legal ambiguities or conflict
among owners may facilitate both the occupation and the duration of
squatting initiatives (Holm and Khun 2010; Piotrowski 2014; Steen et al.
2014, p. 15). The depopulation and revitalisation of city centres and the
industrial restructuring of certain urban areas (Martínez 2013) are also
identified as powerful drivers of squatting moves:
When squatters moved to the city centres in the late 1970s, cities across
Western Europe had been in the midst of a prolonged crisis, struggling with
a long list of socioeconomic ills. . . . Large urban areas were left empty, thus
forming an ideal material basis for squatting. Autonomous activists turned to
the inner cities as an arena for experimenting with autonomy and self-
management. However, as squatters brought new life to the inner cities and
deindustrialisation led to a definitive turn to service industries, the city centres
became popular again and capital returned. . . . As a result, in many cities,
squatting moved from the city centres to the outskirts. (Steen et al. 2014,
p. 16)
The preference for city centres recalls Lefebvre’s demand of the right to
occupy the core of the city in terms of access to facilities, services and
sufficient social density to guarantee an ‘urban democracy’ for all (Lefebvre
1969, p. 31). Squatters aim at locating SSCs in the most convenient
buildings and urban areas for people to gather, meet and develop activities.
Even if they are expelled from the city centres when speculative dynamics
are too pressing on their activity, squatters would select urban locations
among the available ones most appropriate to their goals. Regarding squat-
ting for housing, the centrality issue may be less relevant, although com-
munal forms of squatting tend to prefer close locations of squats with each
other, in the same neighbourhoods.
These insights invite us to ask more in-depth questions: Which contexts

are most significant in order to understand social movements’ performance
and evolution? How structured are those contexts? What kind of specific
interactions between movements and contexts do occur? To what extent are
contexts able to determine, shape and condition social movements?
PRACTICES AND MOVEMENTS

One underlying assumption of this book is that squatting practices may
shape squatting movements, and they often do. This is not always straight-
forward. From the point of view of some squatters, their actions are not
directly intended to protest the housing question—markets and policies.
Squatters can be sometimes isolated from other activists and their particular
squatting experience may last just a few hours or days. There is also the
problem of merging movements focused on the housing question and
movements with broader anti-capitalist, anti-patriarchal and anti-racist
views. The practice of squatting can hold very different meanings for
them, especially in tactical terms—what is squatting for? Squatted houses
and SSCs are thus quite different practices when not combined in the same
buildings, which can also be a source of conflicts. A social movement, finally,
is not merely defined by the activists’ concerns and demands. Their practices
must be socially aggregated, as they continually interact with other political
actors and threaten established power structures. A social movement ‘con-
sists of a sustained challenge to power holders in the name of a population
living under the jurisdiction of those power holders by means of repeated
public displays of that population’s worthiness, unity, numbers, and com-
mitment. . . . The claim-making usually engages third parties such as other
power holders, repressive forces, allies, competitors, and the citizenry as a
whole’ (Tilly 1999, p. 257).
The practice of squatting is sufficiently contentious to contribute to the
history of urban movements—in short, social movements concerned about
spatial issues in cities. However, many practitioners feel reluctant to place it
at the centre of their social and political activity, so that their belonging to a
so-called squatters’ movement seems more an academic construction from
without. Even when squatting is considered a political protest, activists may
be devoted to many other forms of protest, which makes it difficult to name
their movement just based on their claims of buildings and urban spaces. It
is easier to share a squatters’ identity at the peak periods of confrontation,
when the movement grows to an unexpected size and the topic of squatting
enters the media and political agendas. This leaves the valley periods of low
profile conflicts, but continuous lawbreaking practices sustained by interre-

lated groups, hidden. Indeed, all the squatting movements studied in this
book experienced heydays but also decades of not-so-noisy development.
Some non-squatted autonomous social centres can also be identified as key
participants in the squatters’ movements (see the chapters about Brighton
and Copenhagen, for example). Internal divisions or coexistence of different
squatting movements in the same city may indicate more the crucial issue of
legalisation (and the role of social movement organisations) in a usually very
radical and decentralised movement, than its subsidence.
The historical review of the squatters’ movements in European cities,
according to the available data and our contextual interpretations of their
significance, makes it possible to distinguish to what extent there was a
persistent and politically disruptive activity performed by squatters. As Tilly
observes (1999, p. 267), occupations are paradigmatic unconventional
direct actions which are seldom used by social movements compared to
their dedication to persuade authorities and audiences of the activists’
legitimacy. Therefore, the continuation of squatting appears as a powerful
indicator of a movement’s activity, although it is examined here according
to the social and political processes in which they occur. Squatters raise flags
and banners, write pamphlets and magazines, highlight dereliction and
urban speculation, open the doors of the squats to campaigners and
speakers of all sorts, claim the right to housing and to the city centre for
the homeless, for those on the verge of expulsion or already displaced from
their original neighbourhoods, and also for all who are marginalised in the
economic, cultural, social and political spheres. All these practices are inti-
mately associated to the specific squatting actions, and can even occur in
absence of effective squatting if squatters are taking a rest while preparing
the next occupation. In sum, we conceive the existence of squatting move-
ments beyond the mere aggregation of squatting practices, when continu-
ous challenges to the status quo are performed by all who squat and support
squatting (the website http://planet.squat.net/ represents well how squat-
ting movements and other social movements in favour of squatting com-
municate their practices and political discourses).
METHODOLOGICAL NOTE
The main source of empirical information we used in all the case studies is a
database in which every single squat has been identified as extensively as
possible. Although different contributors created their databases with dif-
ferent contents or selection criteria, we all initially reproduced and expanded
the categories set by Mudu (2004): name, location, dates of occupation and
eviction, type of space, duration of previous vacancy, ownership, political
networks involved, activities developed, legal circumstances, negotiations
with owners or authorities, use of the space after the eviction, fascist assaults,
organised groups making regular use of the space, provision of housing,
websites and other sources of information about the case. Analyses of the
data were subject to our distinct local knowledge of the movements’ scenes,
political conflicts and urban transformations. Some SqEK members con-
tributed to disseminate the statistics collected in the databases via interactive
maps (see https://maps.squat.net/en/cities and https://www.trespass.ne
twork/).
The nine cities/metropolitan areas examined here were selected because
the squatting movements were active there for some decades. They also
represent cases in different European countries, different urban sizes, and
different strengths and configurations of the squatting movements.
Researchers are all familiar with the squatters’ scenes in their respective
cities and most of us have presented our interpretations at the SqEK
meetings yearly. Finally, we decided to write collectively the three chapters
of the second part of the book (focused on cycles, institutionalisation and
housing) as a way to discuss the systematic comparison of all the case
studies, instead of leaving the editor with that sole burden. These final
chapters, then, provide an overview of the whole book and can be consid-
ered the general conclusions of our research, although not necessarily
shared by all who do not author every chapter.
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PART I
Case Studies
CHAPTER 2
Socio-Spatial Structures and Protest Cycles

of Squatted Social Centres in Madrid
This chapter examines the historical, political, urban and social circum-
stances that shape the squatting movement in the city of Madrid (Spain).
The guiding research questions are as follows: Why have the volume of
squats, their location and duration changed? Are there any distinguishable
patterns in that evolution? How significant are in this development political,
urban and media contexts? To answer these questions, I draw on the
concepts of ‘protest cycles’ and ‘socio-spatial structures’ – as they are
presented in the introductory chapter of this book.
Squatting in Spain is seldom perceived as a durable urban movement.
Only a few cases of eviction even reached the national headlines. Most of the
squats were reported in the local news. Media coverage focuses primarily on
evictions and legal issues (Alcalde 2004; Casanova 2002; Dee and Santos
2015). Media rarely note how Squatted Social Centres (SSCs) serve as urban
nodes for the articulation of social movements. Over a few decades SSCs in
Madrid hosted fundraising events, talks and exhibitions. They provided
rooms for holding meetings and planning campaigns available to a wide
range of groups and organisations, such as anti-militarist, feminist, environ-
mental, anti-racist, anti-fascist, free radios, open-source, anti-prisons,
M.A. Martínez López (*)

IBF (Institute for Housing and Urban Research), University of Uppsala,
Uppsala, Sweden
© The Author(s) 2018 25

M.A. Martínez López (ed.), The Urban Politics of Squatters’
Movements, The Contemporary City,
https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95314-1_2
workers’ unions, animal rights, anti-war, or anti-neoliberal struggles. This

function as a ‘spatial resource’ has remained essentially unchanged since
the inception of the movement between the late 1970s and mid-1980s.
In the following sections I present first the methodological approach
followed to collect empirical information about SSCs in Madrid. Second, I
distinguish the initial period (1977–1995) of the squatters’ movement
characterised by a transitional regime to a liberal democracy associated
with new social movements and massive inflows of foreign and speculative
capital in the property markets. The next period (1996–2010) starts with
the criminalisation of squatting in 1995–1996. Despite increasing repres-
sion and a more intense wave of capitalist globalisation in the metropolitan
area of Madrid, SSCs continued to grow and tighten links with international
migrants and the alter-globalisation campaigns. The third period of squat-
ting (2011–2015) begins with the 15M mobilisations and a substantial
increase in SSCs following the global financial crisis. Squatting for housing
became more public and politicised. Anti-neoliberal movements and squat-
ters established strong alliances with each other.
I argue that these changes are caused by the specific urban and political
conditions of each period, included the extraordinary duration of some
flagship SSCs. There are few cases of legalisation, due to a general refusal
to negotiations with the authorities, and the relations between squatters and
other social movements are fundamentally articulated with the socio-spatial
structural conditions.
METHODOLOGY
The main methodological tool for this research is a database of all the cases
of SSC located in the metropolitan area of Madrid (both municipality and
region according to the boundaries of the autonomous community, com-
prising 6.5 million of inhabitants in 2013) from 1977 to the end of 2015. In
total, 155 cases were collected. It must be noted that 8 cases took place
between 1977 and 1980 in a period where there was no squatters’ move-
ment known or identified as such. Nevertheless, the pioneering cases in fact
functioned as ‘social centres’ and inspired subsequent generations of activ-
ists. One of those buildings remains occupied today. Although some auton-
omous and self-managed social centres that were never illegally occupied
are closely interconnected with the same activist and squatters’ networks in
the city, they are excluded from this database in order to focus on the
practice of squatting. Thus, when an SSC is legalised, only the period of
SOCIO-SPATIAL STRUCTURES AND PROTEST CYCLES OF SQUATTED. . . 27
illegal occupation is registered. There were four cases of explicit legalisation

after negotiations with the local or regional authorities, and at least three
more in which squatters achieved an agreement with private owners,
although no statement was made public so I treat them as confidential.
Data about squats exclusively dedicated to housing are also excluded
from this analysis. However, according to my records and observations, at
least 30 SSCs hosted residents. In some cases the main purpose of the
occupation was to provide a house for the squatters but later they decided
to open up some parts of the building as a cultural and political venue. Many
squatters of SSCs were also occupying apartments in other buildings but
they preferred not to openly publicise their home squats in order to post-
pone a possible eviction, but also aiming at avoiding more legal risks than
those associated with SSCs. When it comes to SSCs, activists tend to argue
that they do not reside in the property but just make use of it and let others
use it as well (Seminario 2015, pp. 185–221). In general, accurate identi-
fication of most squats for housing in Madrid was not possible due to their
secret nature, but we can estimate that numbers are much larger than SSCs,
especially after 2008. Just as a rough indicator, the Ombudsman’s Depart-
ment acknowledged that 766 flats in social housing estates throughout the
Madrid region were classified as ‘illegally occupied’ by 2012.1
The empirical information collected to fill the database stems from
secondary sources (academic publications, mass media news, websites,
weblogs, activist documents, mapping projects, etc.), direct accounts by
the researcher as a participant and activist observer (occasionally since 1988,
and on a more regular basis from 2007 to 2013) and by contrasting,
verifying and enhancing prior attempts to identify squats.2 The engagement
of the researcher in various SSCs also resulted in supplementary data from
minutes of internal assemblies and workshops, informal talks, observational
notes and 16 formal in-depth personal interviews conducted between 2008
and 2015 which were intended to cover broader topics regarding the
evolution and contexts of squatting. In addition, the author was involved
in the collective organisation and facilitation of a series of 14 debates held
between 2008 and 2010 with the explicit aim of reconstructing a political
1
https://www.defensordelpueblo.es/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/2013-03-Estudio-
Viviendas-Protegidas-Vac%C3%ADas-Anexos.pdf
2
In particular, these four projects: http://www.ucm.es/info/america2/okcrono.htm, www.ok
upatutambien.net, https://15mpedia.org/wiki/Lista_de_centros_sociales_de_la_Comunidad_de
_Madrid, http://www.agitamadrid.org/guia-de-espacios
memory of squatting in Madrid (Seminario 2015). The secondary data

about districts and municipalities in terms of income, unemployment, pop-
ulation and vacancy rates all stem from the main regional statistics depart-
ment3 and from others’ analyses (Alguacil et al. 2011; González and Pérez
2013; Naredo 1996; Rodríguez 2007) (Table 2.1 and Fig. 2.1).
EARLY SQUATTING AND TRIGGERING CONDITIONS: AN INNOVATIVE

URBAN PROTEST IN A TRANSITIONAL REGIME (1977–1995)
In Madrid and in most of the medium-size and large Spanish cities
(Barcelona, Zaragoza, Valencia, Bilbao, etc.) the squatters’ movement as
such started around 1984–1985 (Martínez 2002, pp. 141–146). Political
squatting implies an explicit claim of every occupation as a form of protest in
addition to making actual use of the occupied premises. By hanging banners
at the windows, painting the doors and walls, using the symbol for squatting
which was popularised in other European countries, delivering pamphlets to
the neighbours or presenting the case to the mass media, the claim goes
public. This public visibility adds to the organisation of protest actions and
the expression of critical discourses so that squatters politicise their
occupations.
However, groundbreaking occupations of buildings did occur before the
mid-1980s. In the case of Madrid, the influential citizen movement
(Castells 1983) took over around 500 houses between 1976 and 1978
(Alía 1978). More significantly, trade-union anarchists also occupied build-
ings that they considered their legitimate properties confiscated by the
fascist Franco’s regime (1939–1975). Thus, an active network of Ateneos
Libertarios (AL), not all in squatted premises, emerged during the years of
the transition to democracy (1975–1979) (Carmona 2012, pp. 479–489;
Seminario 2015, pp. 23–77). The activities they hosted, their political
commitment and openness to local residents were very similar to subse-
quent SSCs, although the AL never identified themselves as belonging to
any ‘squatters’ movement’, but to the anarchist one. One of those squatted
AL in Madrid (AL Villaverde) has remained active in the same building up
to today.
The pioneering AL influenced the first three self-managed SSCs
(Mantuano, Migrans and Bulevar) that were opened in the transitional
3
http://www.madrid.org/iestadis/
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
Here is some of the ancient city, vii. 255.
Here lies Father Clarges, etc., xii. 150.
Here lies a she-Sun, and a he-Moon there, etc., viii. 53; xii. 28.
Here will I set up my everlasting bed, etc., viii. 210.
Here’s a health to ane I lo’e dear, etc., v. 140.
here’s the rub, xii. 234.
hermit poor, xii. 126.
heroic sentiment of, etc., iii. 61.
Hesperus, among the lesser lights, shines like, etc., viii. 164.
hewers of wood, etc., x. 124.
hew you as a carcase, etc., xii. 181.
Hey for Doctor’s Commons, viii. 159.
hiatus in manuscriptis, vii. 8, 198; xii. 305.
Hic jacet, x. 221.
hid from ages, i. 49.
High as our heart, v. 271 n.
High-born Hoel’s harp, etc., xii. 260.
high endeavour and the glad success, the, vi. 28; vii. 125; ix. 318,
373.
high leaves, the, etc., iii. 232; iv. 268.
high grass, the, that by the light of the departing sun, etc., v. 363.
high holiday, of once a year, on some, iii. 172; vii. 75.
High Legitimates the Holy Band, the, xi. 423.
High over hill and over dale he flies, v. 43.
High-way, since you my chief Parnassus be, etc., v. 326.
higher and the lower orders, the, xi. 370.
highest and mightiest, vi. 439.
hill of ages, ix. 69.
himself and the universe, x. 166.
Hinc illæ lachrymæ, xii. 187.
hinder parts are ruinous, its, iv. 201.
his bear dances, vi. 412; viii. 507; ix. 351.
His garment neither was of silk nor say, etc., xi. 437.
His generous ardour no cold medium knows, etc., iv. 263; vi. 253.
his little bark, v. 74.
His locked, lettered, braw brass collar, etc., v. 132.
His lot, though small, He sees that little lot, the lot of all, v. 119.
His plays were works, while others’ works were plays, v. 262.
His principiis nascuntur tyranni, etc., vii. 347.
his ruin meets, v. 301.
his spirits gave him raptures with his cook-maid, xii. 155 n.
his soul was like a star, and dwelt apart, v. 180.
his yoke is not easy, etc., iii. 85.
hitch into a rhyme, viii. 50.
hitch it, iii. 64.
Hitherto shalt thou come and no further, vi. 268; viii. 425; x. 344.
Hoc erat in votis, xii. 126.
Hoisting the bloody flag, x. 374, 376.
hold our hands and check our pride, x. 378.
holds his crown in contempt of the choice of the people, i. 394.
See also contempt.
Holds us a while misdoubting his intent, etc., xi. 123.
holiest of holies, x. 336.
hollow and rueful rumble, with, xi. 374.
holy water sprinkle, dipped in dew, a, iv. 246.
Homer, have not the poems of, i. 23; ix. 28.
Homer, the children of, ix. 429.
honest as this world goes, To be, etc., iii. 259; xii. 218.
honest man’s the noblest work of God, an, iii. 345; viii. 458 n.
honest, sonsie, bawsont face, viii. 450; ix. 184.
Honi soit qui mal y pense, vi. 65; ix. 202, 338.
honour consists in the word honour and nothing else, xi. 125.
honour dishonourable, etc., xii. 247.
Honour of Ireland, and as they were curiosities of the human kind,
for the, i. 54.
honourable vigilance, v. 264.
Hood an ass with reverend purple, etc., viii. 44.
Hoop, do me no harm, iii. 212.
Hope and fantastic expectations spend much of our lives, etc., i. 2.
Hope, thou nurse of young Desire, vi. 293.
Hope told a flattering tale, viii. 298.
Hope travels through, nor quits us till we die, vii. 302.
Hope! with eyes so fair, But thou, oh, etc., vi. 255.
Horace still charms with graceful negligence, etc., v. 75.
Horas non numero nisi serenas, x. 387; xii. 51, 52, 53.
horizon, at the, vi. 150.
horned feet, And with their, etc., xii. 258.
horse-whipping woman, that, viii. 468.
hortus siccus of dissent, the, iii. 264; x. 370.
host of human life, xi. 497.
hour when I escap’d the wrangling crew, The, etc., iii. 225.
house of brother Van I spy, The, etc., xii. 449.
house on the wild sea, with wild usages, v. 153.
housing with wild men, etc., x. 279.
How am I glutted with conceit of this? v. 203.
How apparel makes a man respected, etc., v. 290.
How blest art thou, canst love the country, Wroth, v. 307.
How do you, noble cousin? etc., v. 258.
How happy could I be with either, etc., xi. 426.
How is it, General? i. 209.
how it grew, and it grew, etc., vii. 93; xi. 517.
How little knew’st thou of Calista, iii. 180.
How lov’d, how honour’d once, avails them not, v. 176.
How near am I to happiness, etc., ii. 330; v. 216.
How oft, O Dart! what time the faithful pair, iv. 305 n.
How profound the gulf, etc., xi. 424.
How shall our great discoverers obtain, etc., i. 115.
How shall we part and wander down, etc., xii. 428.
how tall his person is, etc., vii. 211.
howled through the vacant guardrooms, etc., ix. 229.
Hudibras, who used to ponder, and, etc., viii. 66.
huge, dumb heap, vi. 28; ix. 56.
human face divine, x. 77.
human form is the most perfect, the, etc., x. 346.
human reason is like a drunken man, etc., vi. 147.
human understanding resembles a drunken clown, etc., xi. 216.
humanity, a discipline of, i. 123; vii. 78, 184; xii. 122.
Hundred Tales of Love, him of the, xi. 424.
hung armour of the invincible knights of old, is, i. 273; viii. 442.
hung like a cloud upon the mountain; now, etc., vii. 13.
Hunt half a day for a forgotten dream, iv. 323; ix. 64.
hunt the wind, I worship a statue, etc., vi. 97, 236; xii. 435.
hunter of shadows, himself a shade, a, vi. 168.
huntsmen are up in America, the, v. 340 n.
hurt by the archers, iii. 456; iv. 104.
Hussey, hussey, you will be as much ill-used and as much
neglected, etc., v. 108; viii. 194.
Hyde Park, all is a desert, Beyond, vi. 187; vii. 67; viii. 36.
Hymns its good God, and carols sweet of love, xi. 427, 501.
Hypocritical pretensions to virtue, i. 392.
I.
I also was an Arcadian. See Arcadian and painter.
I am afraid, my friend, this letter will never, etc., i. 94.
I am not as this poor Hottentot, iv. 44 n.
I am, on the contrary, persuaded, etc., vi. 126.
I apprehend you, viii. 10.
I cannot, seeing she’s woven of such bad stuff, etc., v. 238.
I cannot marry Crout, xii. 122.
I care not, Fortune, what you me deny, etc., vii. 371.
I’d sooner be a dog, xii. 202.
I hate ye, iv. 272.
I have secur’d my brother, viii. 86.
I hope none living, sir, And, viii. 201.
I knew you could not bear it, viii. 228.
I know he is not dead; I know proud death, etc., v. 208.
I know that all beneath the moon decays, etc., v. 299.
I’ll have a frisk with you, viii. 103.
I’ll walk, to get me an appetite, etc., v. 268 n.
I’m feeble; some widow’s curse, etc., viii. 274.
I never saw you look so like your mother, In all my life, viii. 456.
I never valued fortune but as it was subservient to my pleasure, viii.
72.
I observe, as a fundamental ground common to all the arts, etc., vi.
32.
I pr’ythee, look thou giv’st my little boy some syrup for his cold,
etc., v. 245.
I prythee, spare me, gentle boy; press me no more for that slight
toy, etc., viii. 55.
I rode one evening with Count Maddalo, etc., x. 261.
I see before me the gladiator lie, xi. 425.
I see him sweeter than the nosegay in his hand, etc., i. 65; v. 107.
I set out upon this adventurous journey, etc., xi., 249.
I stood in Venice, on the bridge of sighs, xi. 423.
I, that might have married the famous Mr Bickerstoff, etc., i. 7; viii.
96.
I think not so; her infelicity seem’d to have years too many, etc., v.
246; x. 260.
I think poets are Tories by nature, xii. 241.
I thought of Chatterton, the marvellous boy, etc., v. 122.
I too, whose voice no claims but truth’s e’er moved, etc., i. 379 n.
I’ve heard of hearts unkind, etc., iii. 172; xi. 515.
I was invited yesternight to a solemn supper, etc., viii. 41.
I was not train’d in academic bowers, etc., v. 283.
I will touch it, iii. 127.
I wish I was where Anna lies, iv. 305.
I wish my old hobbling mother, etc., viii. 80.
I wish you would follow Dr Cantwell’s precepts, vii. 189 n.
I would borrow a simile from Burke, etc., iii. 419.
I would not wish to have your eyes, vi. 19.
I would take the Ghost’s word, xii. 88 n.
Ici rugit Cain les cheveux hérissés, etc., xi. 234.
Idea can be like nothing but an idea, an, etc., xi. 109.
Idea, It is true we can form a tolerably distinct, etc., xi. 57.
Idea which in itself is particular becomes general, an, etc., xi. 23.
Ideas, If in having our, in the memory ready at hand, etc., xi. 45 n.
Ideas, operations, and faculties of the mind may be traced, all the,
etc., xi. 167.
Ideas seemed to lie like substances in the brain, iii. 397.
ideas seem to elude the senses, moral, etc., xi. 88.
ideas and operations of the mind proceed? Whence do all the, xi.
171.
idiot and embryo, iii. 270.
Idleness, with light-winged toys of feathered, xii. 58.
If a man lies on his back, etc., x. 341.
If a thousand pardons about your necks were tied, etc., v. 276.
If any author deserved the name of an original, etc., i. 171.
If aught of oaten stop or pastoral song May hope, chaste Eve, to
soothe thy modest ear, etc., v. 116.
If ever chance two wandering lovers brings, etc., v. 76.
If Florence be i’ th’ Court he would not kill me, etc., v. 241.
If his hand were full of truths, etc., ii. 393.
If o’er the cruel tyrant love, vi. 293; viii. 248, 320; xi. 304.
if the poor were to cut the throats of the rich, etc., iii. 132.
If these things are done in the green tree, etc., vii. 140.
If they cannot succeed in what is trifling, etc., vii. 168.
If this man Had but a mind allied unto his words, etc., v. 264.
If to her share, viii. 525.
If to their share some splendid virtues fall, etc., vii. 83.
If we fly into the uttermost parts of the earth, etc., v. 16.
If ye kill’d a thousand in an hour’s space, etc., v. 276.
If you cannot find in your heart to tell him you love him, I’ll sigh it
out of you, etc., v. 290.
If you were to write a fable for little fishes, vii. 163.
If you yield, I die To all affection, etc., v. 255.
ignorance was bliss, vii. 222.
Il avoit une grande puissance de raison, etc., i. 88 n.
Il y a aujourd’hui, jour des Paques Fleuris ... Madame Warens, vi.
24.
Il y a des impressions, etc., iii. 152; xii. 261.
Il y a donc des esprits de deux sortes, etc., xi. 287.
Ils ne pouvoient croire qu’un corps de cette beauté, etc., vi. 200 n.
ils se rejouissoient tristement, xii. 16.
Iliad of woes, iii. 10; iv. 41.
Ille igitur qui protrusit cylindrum, etc., xi. 73.
illustrious obscure, x. 143.
illustrious personages were introduced, These three, etc., vi. 209.
Illustrious predecessors, i. 380.
image and superscription, ix. 330.
image of his mind, the, iv. 372.
imagination étoit la première de ses facultés, etc., i. 88 n.
impeachment, We own the soft, x. 142.
impediments, the first of these, etc., x. 258.
impenetrable whiskers have confronted flames, Those, i. 422; xi.
273 n.
imperium in imperio, vi. 265.
implicité, it is without the copula, etc., x. 121, 129.
imposition of names, some of larger, some of stricter signification,
by this, etc., xi. 129.
Imposture, organised into a comprehensive and self-consistent
whole, etc., iii. 147.
imprisoned wranglers free, set the, iii. 390.
in all things a regular and moderate indulgence, etc., xi. 518.
in corpore vili, iv. 3.
in dallying with interdicted subjects; v. 207.
In doleful dumps, etc., xii. 12 n.
in each hard instance tried, oh soul supreme, x. 375.
In green vine leaves he was right fitly clad, v. 35; x. 74.
In happy hour doth he receive, etc., iii. 49.
in his habit as he lived, xii. 27.
in medio tutissimus ibis, viii. 473.
In my former days of bliss, etc., xi. 284.
In one of Mr Locke’s most noted remarks, etc., xi. 286.
In peace, there’s nothing so becomes a man, xii. 71.
In poetry the same effect is produced by a few abrupt and rapid
gleams of description, etc., v. 33.
in Pyrrho’s maze, iii. 226.
In search of wit these lose their common sense, etc., v. 74.
In spite of these swine-eating Christians, etc., v. 210 n.
in their eyes, in their hands, etc., i. 45; xi. 373.
in their untroubled element shall shine when we are laid in dust,
etc., v. 52.
In vain I haunt the cold and silver springs, etc., v. 302.
Incredulous odi, vii. 102.
independently of his conduct or merits, etc., xi. 417.
Indignatio facit versus, iii. 257, 317; v. 112.
Individual nature produces little beauty, xi. 212.
incapable of its own distress, viii. 450.
inconstant stage, the, viii. 383.
indolence is the source of all mischief, iv. 70.
Indus to the Pole, from, xii. 185, 278.
inexpressive she; The fair, the chaste, the, xii. 205.
inexpressive three, viii. 454.
infidels and fugitives, as, etc., xi. 443.
infants’ skulls, Hell was paved with, vii. 243.
infinite agitation of men’s wit, iv. 314; vi. 312; xi. 323; xii. 441.
infirmity, of our, viii. 402.
informed with music, sentiment, and thought, never to die, v. 274.
inhuman rout, the, v. 89.
inimitable on earth, etc., viii. 55.
innocence and simplicity of poor Charity Boys, ix. 18.
inscribed the cross of Christ, etc., iii. 152.
Insipid levelling morality to which the modern stage is tied down,
etc., xi. 298.
insolent piece of paper, an, xii. 168.
Insensés qui vous plaignez, etc., iv. 100.
instance might be painful; The, but the principle would please, viii.
21.
instinct with fire, viii. 423.
insulted the slavery of Europe, etc., iii. 13.
interlocutions between Lucius and Caius, viii. 417.
interminable babble, vii. 198.
Into a lower world, to theirs obscure And wild—To breathe in other
air, etc., v. 262.
intoxicating, whatever is most, in the odour of a Southern spring,
etc., i. 248.
Intus et in cute, vii. 24, 226; viii., 116; x. 34.
invariable principles, xi. 486.
invention of the enemy, A weak, etc., viii. 355.
inventory of all he said, viii. 103.
invincible knights of old, the, etc., i. 273; viii. 442.
invita Minervâ, vii. 8, 56, 119; viii. 379.
Irish People and the Irish Parliament, xi. 472.
Irishman in a row, like an, etc., xi. 494.
Iron has not entered his soul, The, xii. 277.
Iron mask, the Man in the, iv. 93.
iron rod, the torturing hour, the, xii. 215.
irritabile genus vatum, iii. 221.
island in the watery waste, lone, iv. 190.
Islands of the Blest, ix. 253.
It is a very good office, etc., viii. 2.
it is better to marry than burn, iii. 272.
It is by this and this alone, etc., vi. 135.
It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, etc., i. 376
n.
It is he who gives the second blow, etc., vi. 396.
It is my father, v. 237.
It is not easy to define in what this great style consists, etc., vi. 123.
It is not with me you are in love ... Sophia Western, etc., i. 44.
It is observable, I know not for what cause, etc., i. 318.
It is the keystone, vi. 36; xi. 581.
It is the same harmless thing that a poor shepherd, etc., v. 343.
it only is when he is out he is acting, vi. 296.
It’s well they’ve got me a husband, viii. 82.
It was even twilight, etc., i. 218.
It was my wish like him to live, etc., v. 362.
It was reserved for Shakespeare to unite purity of heart, i. 253.
it was very good of God, etc., xi. 352.
It will never do, iii. 361; vii. 367.
Italiam, Italiam! ii. 329.
Ithuriel’s spear, ix. 369.
J.
jackdaw just caught in a snare, And looks like a, etc., viii. 238.
Jacobin, Once a, etc., i. 430; iii. 110, 159.
Jacobin who writes in the Chronicle, the true, iii. 175.
Jacques, The melancholy, etc., xii. 285.
Jactet se in aulis, etc., iv. 71 n.
Je suis peintre, non pas teinturier, ix. 435.
jealous God, at sight of human ties, The, etc., xi. 147.
Jew that Shakespeare drew, the, i. 158.
jewels in his crisped hair, Like, xii. 450.
Job’s comforters, vii. 179.
John de Bologna, after he had finished, Thus, etc., vi. 140.
Johnny Keats, vii. 208.
jolly god in triumph comes, etc., the, v. 81.
jovial thigh, the, etc., xii. 196.
joys are lodged beyond the reach of fate, Those, vi. 23.
Joy, joy for ever, my task is done! etc., iv. 357.
judgment, after it has been long passive, the, etc., vi. 128.
judgment is really nothing but a sensation, xi. 86.
Juger est sentir, xi. 87.
Juno’s swans, link’d and inseparable, Like, xi. 472 n.
Jupiter tonans, xi. 308.
Justice is preferable to mercy, xi. 86, 88.
justify before his sovereign, he would not, etc., vi. 100.
justly called the Silent, viii. 13.
justly decried author, a, xi. 167.
K.
Kais is fled, and our tents are forlorn, for, etc., vi. 196.
Kean’s Othello is, we suppose, the finest piece of acting, viii. 414.
keeping his state, viii. 402.
kept in ponderous vases, are, x. 161.
kept like an apple, etc., xii. 171.
kept the even tenor of their way, have, vi. 44; viii. 123; x. 41.
kept under, or himself held up to derision, i. 147, 149.
key-stone that makes up the arch, ’Tis the last, etc., vi. 36; xi. 581.
kill at a blow, the two to, xii. 194.
killing langour, relieve the, etc., iii. 132; v. 357.
Kind and affable to me, etc., xii. 267.
King could live near such a man, no, i. 305.
King is but a king, a, etc., xi. 324.
king of good fellows and wale of old men, the, viii. 103.
kings, As kind as, etc., xii. 140.
Kings are naturally lovers of low company, vi. 159; xi. 442.
kings, if there were no more, etc., i. 387.
King’s Old Courtier, The, etc., iv. 232.
kings, the best of, i. 305; iii. 41.
Kingly Kensington, xii. 275.
Kiuprili, Had’st thou believ’d, etc., xi. 412.
kirk is gude, and the gallows is gude, The, etc., viii. 269.
knaves do work with, called a fool, which, xi. 415.
knavish but keen, iii. 60.
knight had ridden down from Wensley moor, etc., v. 157.
knight himself did after ride, The, etc., viii. 66.
know another well, were to know one’s self, vi. 316.
know my cue without a prompter, vii. 226.
know that I shall become that being, But I, vii. 395.
Know that which made him gracious in your eyes, etc., v. 290.
Know the return of Spring, xi. 317.
know to know no more, v. 67.
Know, virtue were not virtue if the joys, etc., ix. 431.
Know ye that lust of kingdoms hath no law, etc., v. 195.
knoweth whence it cometh, no man, etc., xii. 312.
knowledge, that had I all, etc., vi. 225.
knowledge, Though he should have all, etc., vii. 199; x. 208.
Koran and sugar! the, ix. 56 n.
L.
La ci darem, viii. 364.
La nuit envellopait les champs et les ramparts, etc., xi. 236.
la téte me tourne, etc., xi. 125.
laborious foolery, with, iv. 239; ix. 121, 332; xi. 289.
labour of love, ix. 223.
ladder of life, the, xi. 388.
lady of fashion would admire a star, etc., xi. 499.
lady of a manor, A certain, etc., i. 422; xi. 273 n.
laggard age, xii. 208.
Laid waste the borders and o’erthrew the bowers, iv. 282, 334; vi.
50; viii. 36.
Lancelot of the Lake, a bright romance, ’Twas etc., viii. 441.
landlady, the, and Tam grew gracious, etc., v. 129.
languages a man can speak, for the more, etc., vi. 70.
lapped in luxury, ix. 284.
large heart enclosed, in, xii. 303.
last objection, In regard to the, etc., vi. 141.
last of those bright clouds, the, ix. 477.
last of those fair clouds, the, that on the bosom of bright honour,
etc., v. 345. 369.
lasting woe, vii. 429.
latter end of this system of law, the, xi. 89.
laudator temporis acti, iv. 241.
laugh now who never laugh’d before; Let those, etc., viii. 469; xi.
316.
Laugh to-day and cry to-morrow, viii. 536.
laughed with Rabelais, etc., iv. 217.
Launched on the bosom of the silver Thames, xi. 505.
Law by which mankind suffers, etc., iii. 203.
law of laws, the, etc., iv. 203.
Laws are not, like women, the worse for being old, viii. 22; xii. 161
n.
laws of nature which are the laws of God, etc., iv. 295.
lawful monarch’s bleeding head, his, etc., viii. 309.
lay heavy burthens on the poor and needy, They, iv. 150.
lay the flattering unction, etc., xii. 230.
lay waste a country gentleman, viii. 36.
See Laid.
lay’d a body in the sun, Say I had, etc., vi. 315.
La père des humains voit sa nombreuse race, etc., xi. 233.
Le son des cloches, xii. 58 n.
lean pensioners, vii. 401.
Leaping like wanton kids in pleasant spring, vi. 172.
leaps at once to its effect, xii. 185.
learn her manner, To, etc., ix. 326.
learned the trick of imposing, iii. 16.
leave, oh, leave me to my repose! i. 84; vi. 71, 182, 249; viii. 313; xii.
121.
leave others poor indeed, xii. 219.
leave our country and ourselves, etc., xi. 353.
leave stings, vii. 287; ix. 72.
leave the will puzzled, etc., xi. 446.
Leave then the luggage of your fate behind, etc., v. 357.
leaving the things that are behind, etc., x. 195.
leaving the world no copy, viii. 272.
leaves in October, like, viii. 142.
leaves our passions, afloat, etc., iii. 92.
leer malign, with jealous, xii. 43, 287, 387.
left its little life in air, it, xii. 322.
left the sitting part, he, of the man behind him, viii. 17.
leg? Can it set a, etc., i. 6.
lend it both an understanding, etc., xii. 55.
Lend us a knee, etc., v. 257.
Les Francs à chaque instant voient de nouveaux guerriers, xi. 232.
lest it should be hurried over the precipice, etc., vi. 156.
lest the courtiers offended should be, iii. 45; viii. 457.
Let Europe and her pallid sons go weep, etc., v. 115.
Let go thy hold, etc., iii, 192.
Let honour and preferment go, etc., xii. 323.
Let loose the greyhound, and lock up Hoyden, vi. 414; viii. 82.
Let me not like a worm go by the way, v. 30; xi. 506.
let me light my pipe at her eyes, xii. 455.
Let modest Foster if he will, excel, etc., vi. 367.
Let no rude hand deface it, etc., vi. 89; viii. 91.
Let not rage thy bosom firing, viii. 248, 320.
Let the event, that never-erring arbitrator, tell us, v. 258.
let there be light, viii. 298.
Let those laugh now who never laugh’d before, etc., viii. 469; xi.
316.
letting contemplation have its fill, iv. 215.
leurre de dupe, iv. 5; vii. 225.
Leviathan among all the creatures, the, etc., vii. 276; viii. 32.
Leviathan, the, tumbling about his unwieldy bulk, vii. 13.
liar of the first magnitude, v. 279.
liberalism—lovely liberalism, ix. 233.
liberty was merely a custom of England, xii. 215.
Liceat, quæso, populo, etc., iii. 299.
license of the time, viii. 186.
lie is most unfruitful, The, etc., viii. 456.
lies about us in our infancy, that, i. 250; x. 358.
life, a thing of, ix. 177, 225; xi. 504.
life an exact piece would make, Who to the, etc., ix, 326.
life and death in disproportion met, Like, vi. 96; xii. 127.
life, From the last dregs of, etc., xii. 159.
life is best, This, etc., xii. 321.
Life is a pure flame, etc., xii. 150.
Life knows no return of spring, vi. 292.
life of life was flown, when all the, vi. 24; xii. 159.
Life! thou strange thing, etc., xii. 152.
ligament, fine as it was, that, etc., vii. 227; xi. 306.
light as a bird, as, etc., iii. 313.
light, But once put out their, etc., xi. 197.
light, her glorious, ix. 316.
like a surgeon’s skeleton in a glass case, viii. 350.
Like a tall bully, ix. 482.
Like a worm goes by the way, xi. 514.
Like angel’s visits, few, and far between, iv. 346 and n.; v. 150 and
n.; vii. 38.
Like as the sun-burnt Indians do array, etc., xi. 334.
like Cato, gave his little senate laws, iv. 202.
like importunate Guinea fowls, one note day and night, iii. 60; xi.
338.
like it because it is not vulgar, I, vi. 160.
Like kings who lose the conquest gain’d before, etc., viii. 425.
like master like man, xii. 132.
like morning brought by night, v. 150.
Like old importment’s bastard, v. 258.
Like proud seas under him, iv. 260; vii. 274.
Like Samson his green wythes, xii. 128.
Like some celestial sweetness, the treasure of soft love, v. 253.
Like strength reposing on his own right arm, v. 189.
Like the high leaves upon the holly tree, iii. 232; iv. 268.
Like the swift Alpine torrent, etc., x. 73.
Like to the falling of a star, etc., v. 296.
liked a comedy, better than a tragedy, He, etc., viii. 25.
lily on its stalk green, the, v. 296.
limited fertility and a limited earth, iv. 294.
limner’s art may trace the absent feature, Yes, the, viii. 305.
Linden, when the sun was low, On, etc., iv. 347.
line too labours and the thoughts move slow, The, etc., viii. 313,
331.
line upon line, and precept upon precept, x. 314.
lines are equally good, All his, etc., viii. 287.
Linked each to each by natural piety, xi. 520.
link of peaceful commerce ’twixt dividable shores, i. 144.
liquid texture, mortal wound, And in its, etc., iii. 350.
lisped in numbers, iv. 215; v. 79; xii. 29.
little leaven leaveneth the whole lump, iv. 267.
little man and he had a little soul, There was a, iv. 358 n.
little man, but of high fancy, A, etc., vii. 203.
little sneering sophistries of a collegian, the, xi. 123.
little spot of green, i. 18; v. 100.
little things are great to little man, These, etc., vi. 226.
Little think’st thou, poor flower, etc., viii. 51.
Little think’st thou, poor heart, viii. 52.
Little Will, the scourge of France, etc., v. 106.
live and move and have their being, they, vi. 190.
live, if this may life be called, Yea, thus they, etc., viii. 307.
live in his description, iv. 337; vi. 53.
live to please, he must, etc., viii. 433.
live to think, etc., xii. 147.
lively, audible, etc., xii. 130.
lively sense of future favours, a, viii. 17.
lives and fortunes men, vii. 364; xi. 437.
living with them, There is no, etc., vii. 300.
Lo, here be pardons half a dozen, etc., v. 277.
lobster, like the lady in the, viii. 430.
Lochiel, a far cry to, viii. 425.

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The Urban Politics of Squatters'

Movements 1st Edition Miguel A.

More information about this series at

The Urban Politics of

The Contemporary City

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017959088

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018

Cover illustration: Miguel A. Martínez López

Printed on acid-free paper

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature

This book is a result of the research project MOVOKEUR, ‘The Squatters’

1 Introduction: The Politics of Squatting, Time Frames

Part I Case Studies 23

2 Socio-Spatial Structures and Protest Cycles of Squatted

3 Squatting Cycles in Barcelona: Identities, Repression

4 Shifting Socio-Spatial Contexts and the Space of Social

5 Occupations of Housing and Social Centers in Rome:

6 The Squatting Movement(s) in Paris: Internal Divides

7 The Cycles of Squatting in Berlin (1969–2016) 145

8 Cycles of the Copenhagen Squatter Movement: From

9 The Political Squatters’ Movement and Its Social

10 The Ebb and Flow of Resistance: The Squatters’

Part II Comparisons 227

11 More than Four Decades of Squatting: Cycles,

12 Keep Your Piece of Cake, We’ll Squat the Bakery!

13 Squatted Social Centres and the Housing Question 271

Thomas Aguilera is Assistant Professor of political science at Sciences Po

azozomox is an activist involved in various struggles against gentriﬁcation,

the Occupations of Kottbusser Straße 8 and Forster Straße 16/17, Berlin-

Oriol Barranco is a post-doctoral researcher at the Department of Sociol-

Claudio Cattaneo is post-doctoral fellow at the Barcelona Institute of

Galvão Debelle is a PhD graduate at the Department of Media, Commu-

E.T.C. Dee researches urban squatting and social centres. He has

Commons and Autonomy as Alternatives to Capitalism (2014); ‘Moving

Ibán Díaz-Parra is post-doctoral researcher in the University of Seville.

Robert González is currently professor and researcher in Political Science

Marta Llobet is PhD in Sociology, lecturer at the University of Barcelona

Miguel A. Martínez López is Professor of Housing and Urban Sociology

Pierpaolo Mudu is PhD in Geography and collaborates with the

Gianni Piazza holds a PhD in Political Science at the University of Flor-

Partecipazione e Conﬂitto. His publications focus on local government and

Luisa Rossini is PhD in Urban and Regional Planning from University of

reviews and works of historians (Colin 2005; Péchu 2010).

Fig. 11.2 Squatting cycles-stages in three Central-North European cities,

Table 2.1 Duration of Squatted Social Centres in Madrid, 1977–2015 29

Introduction: The Politics of Squatting, Time

Miguel A. Martı́nez López

The unlawful practice of squatting vacant buildings without the owner’s

M.A. Martínez López (*)

© The Author(s) 2018 1

and commodiﬁcation of all kinds of goods and services (Lazzarato 2012)

clandestine practices of squatting with no connection to politically aimed

changes in squatting over various decades as accurately as possible according

ARTICULATIONS BETWEEN AGENCY AND STRUCTURE

squatters follow a cross-national pattern of DIY (do-it-yourself) and

new forms of collective action’ (Tarrow 1995, p. 92). In their metaphorical

Berlin squatters’ movement according to the process of radicalisation of

In applying this perspective to our subject, instead of conceiving every

These insights invite us to ask more in-depth questions: Which contexts

PRACTICES AND MOVEMENTS

proﬁle conﬂicts, but continuous lawbreaking practices sustained by interre-

Tilly, C. (1999). From interactions to outcomes in social movements. In M. Giugni,

Socio-Spatial Structures and Protest Cycles