Antiga Massana: Community services in an occupied space in the Raval

In recent weeks, Barcelona has seen scores of bright pink posters plastered over walls across the city. They urged people to turn out for a protest on October 18 to defend the old Antiga Massana, the old Massana school building. 

A day before the protest, the community activists that are running the occupied former school building and organizing social work there had successfully prevented an eviction, but the Barcelona city council has already started the procedure to carry out a more forceful one. 

What happens in the occupied Antiga Massana?

The Antiga Massana is a self-declared ‘Espai sota control popular’ – a space under community control.

Abandoned for three years, the building was taken over by activists in 2020 and put to social use. 

The space offers residents of the Raval a community gym with boxing classes, free Catalan and Spanish classes to help immigrants integrate better, a school for underprivileged children, and a space for artistic and creative expression. 

When announcing details of the occupation of the space back in 2020, Elena Martín, spokesperson for the Antiga Massana, said that Raval locals were “tired of all the gentrified cultural projects” in their area “that are not really for the people of the neighborhood.” Instead, in the occupied social space, they want to “create something that really is for the people.”

Politics is also an important element. The Antiga Massana is an occupied space, meaning the activists running it don’t own the space and did not seek official permission to be there or run the activities they do.

The space also serves as a place where housing activists can meet and organize, and the activities carried out there are done in an anti-racist and LGBTQI-friendly environment.

The occupation of the Antiga Massana is a form of direct action, whereby the locals of the Raval neighborhood have taken it upon themselves to create an apparatus to provide the community with services without the intervention of the administration, which they felt was not attending to their necessities. All of this was done deliberately in a building that had been left unused for years. 

Lamiae Abassi, one resident of the Raval neighborhood, told the Catalan News Agency that community-led activities are more engaging than ones organized by official institutions. “A lot of activities put on by the council don’t really respond to the needs of the people,” she said. 

Why does the Barcelona council want to evict the Antiga Massana?

The Barcelona city council wants to evict the activists and recover the space for their own use. Albert Batlle, the city councilor for the Ciutat Vella old town district, told the Catalan News Agency in an interview last summer that its current use is “completely illegal,” and that there was “no justification for it.” 

Batlle said that the council “will carry out social policies if it suits, but only done in accordance with and under the direction of the administration.”

The activists don’t trust that the council will put the space to true community work, and are skeptical about the administration’s model for the city in general, which they believe is too strongly based on tourism. 

In a post on their Instagram feed, the Antiga Massana activists point to plans to demolish the building and create a walkway for people, tourists mainly, to access the La Boqueria market, located on La Rambla, which is one of the most popular tourist destinations in the city. 

What will happen next? 

The previous council led by Ada Colau had started the process to formalize the activists’ rights to use the property, something that was “promised” to them after “two years” of working with the former local government, according to spokesperson Elena Martín, but now the new Socialist-led administration is taking a very different approach. 

The Socialists have not contacted the activists since they have been in power, since June 2023, despite numerous attempts from the Antiga Massana representatives to initiate dialogue. Through decisions taken and words in interviews, the Socialists have said only that the Antiga Massana activists will have to leave the premises.

Martín, on the other hand, pointed out that the activists are used to "fighting until the last consequences" and assured they will not back down, vowing to defend the project "legally and politically." 

All the while, the Socialist city council affirms the occupation is illegal and say the activists must leave. The situation is only likely to build into a larger conflict over the use of public property and community services.