Okupas: The Multifaceted Problem of Spain's Squatters

Barcelona, Catalunya and Spain in general have a problem when it comes to okupas (squatters), though whose problem it is depends on whose side you’re on. As with most things, the line is often drawn according to class, race, politics, ideology and the specific context of each case.

What is the Okupa Movement?

Okupa is a word for an individual who occupies or “okupies” a space. The different spelling is deliberate; it’s meant to refer to a specific movement with a range of sociopolitical undertones. While squatters’ communities can be found all over Europe—Italy, Germany, France, the Netherlands, England, Wales, the Czech Republic, Greece, Poland, Switzerland and—perhaps most famously, Freetown Christianiana in Denmark—in Spain the okupa culture has found a strong foothold and has also been the source of deep controversy. 

According to a report by Antena 3, one of Spain’s largest television networks, Catalunya currently represents approximately half of all cases of squatting in the country. Last year, the number of okupied properties in the Barcelona municipal limits numbered over 5,000, and the situation has only been complicated by the 2020 coronavirus pandemic. 

In a recent readers’ poll on the website of the national newspaper La Vanguardia, over 98% of those who responded said “yes” to the question: “Are more effective measures needed to tackle Spain’s squatting phenomenon?” You’ll notice that the poll did not ask if more restrictive measures are needed, or the opposite—only whether or not something needs to change.

The Squatters’ Side of the Story

Okupas define themselves as “a radical social movement that advocates the occupation of uninhabited homes or premises, temporarily or permanently, in order to use them as housing, farmland, a meeting place or a community center for social, political and cultural activities.” The national movement has been around for a while, with the first recorded cases of squatters being evicted from previously abandoned buildings in Spain in 1984. 

Okupas will tell you that they see their actions as working towards positive social change: that rather than suffering within the confines of a broken, unfair capitalist system, they prefer to challenge that system and look for alternative ways of surviving. Property speculators raise rents to astronomical levels that the average citizen can’t afford. Entire families are left in the streets when their homes are repossessed by banks, which then leave the buildings sitting empty and useless for years. The squatter movement argues that it is socially responsible to make constructive use of these kinds of spaces, and that having a roof over your head is a human right, especially within the context of a socialist system like many countries in Europe.

They say that neighbors’ complaints about the presence of okupas are often motivated by ignorance, racism or classism, and that they, the squatters, feel their safety is being threatened by hostile conservatives who don’t understand that what they’re trying to accomplish is for the greater good.

This may sound like a hippy, free-love way of looking at living on a property that one is not paying for, but there are government officials—such as Barcelona’s current mayoress, Ada Colau—that agree with them. She herself was an okupa in the neighborhood of Barceloneta years ago and has drawn fire from conservatives for her support of the movement since taking office. The issue is more complex and nuanced than it first appears. 

The Anti-Okupas’ Side of the Story

Homeowners, neighbors and those government officials who are in favor of harsher anti-okupa laws will tell you that most squatters are not starving families, but well-organized and often violent groups, some controlled by drug mafias. They will argue that many are professional squatters—savvy con artists who take control of an apartment, a building, or an entire block with the aim of extorting money out of the rightful owners. 

The neighbors will tell you that they feel unsafe in their own homes, but that the police do nothing. There are frightening stories of scams and violent situations that have forced individuals from their primary or secondary residences, and homeowners who have fought lengthy and expensive legal battles to try to oust the illegal invaders from their property.

Pro-okupas will tell you that these nefarious situations are the exception, that most squatters seek out unused, abandoned spaces and as far away from trouble as possible. They will tell you that it makes no logical sense to purposely put themselves in an explosive situation when there are other options available, that the enemy is not the neighbors, but the capitalist system itself.

Who is telling the truth? Or is there more than one kind of okupa? And perhaps most importantly—both in a practical sense and in terms of what it says about the reality of the situation—what does the law say about squatters’ rights versus the rights of the property owner if there is a difference of opinion?

What Does the Law Actually Say?

Barcelona’s and Spain’s okupa laws are difficult to understand in an intuitive sense. If you are the legal owner of a property, how is it possible that someone could break in, claim ownership and have more rights to the place than you do? That can’t be true, right?

But it is. If a squatter can prove that he or she has been on the premises for at least 48 hours*, that person has squatters’ rights, or the right of adverse possession. 

If you or someone else—a neighbor, for example—happens to report the squatters within 48 hours of their entering the premises, the police can evict them without a warrant. However, many squatters are well-informed: they will inevitably claim that they have been on the premises for longer than this initial period, and it is difficult to prove otherwise. Most homeowners don’t carry proof of ownership on their person when they leave the house, so at least in the beginning, it’s your word against the word of the person who is inside your house. 

If the house was empty, does not have a visible for sale or for rent sign, and 48 hours have ostensibly passed, the owner can no longer request immediate eviction by the police, but must start legal proceedings. Lawyers will almost inevitably tell you to file some kind of legal complaint against the squatters, as you can be denounced for coercion if you attempt to simply change the locks or cause them to leave by force. 

Some lawyers will advise bringing a criminal case, which is a complicated process involving both investigative and sentencing courts, and must be directed at an individual—a physical person—which requires the identification of each individual involved. 

Most lawyers will recommend bringing a civil court case instead, which doesn’t carry the same heavy punishment as a criminal case but can be easier to prove. A civil proceeding does not need to be directed at any individual person, and the proceedings are usually shorter than those of a criminal trial. The civil code was designed to evict renters who don’t pay, but over time has become a tool in the fight against squatters.

The problem is that the civil court proceedings can take as long as a year or more, and the squatters have the legal right to remain on the property until the judge makes a ruling.

The Weirdest Law Ever and the Role it Plays

After speaking to people on both sides of the okupa issue, I’ve come to the conclusion that Spain’s often counterintuitive laws have played a big role in fanning the flames of the conflict over squatting. If the law made more sense, there would be fewer opportunities for destructive squatters to game the system, while still protecting the rights of families at risk and those who truly believe in the idea of the okupa movement as a force for social change.

Full disclosure: That is not what I thought I’d be writing when I started researching this article. I purchased a home two years ago, and it was an incredible investment of time, energy, will and money. The idea that someone could literally walk in and have more rights to the place than I do made me see red. It still does—woe to the squatter that tries to take over my home. But I had no idea of the scope of the okupa movement, and that there are potentially legitimate arguments for squatting under certain circumstances.

“What circumstances?” Right. Here we go. 

Destructive Squatters: Examples

Before I give you examples of “good” squatters, let me get the horror stories out of the way. Over the past several years, there have been numerous cases of bad squatters in the news, which are the cases that came to mind when I started writing this article. 

There have been cases of a secondary residence being okupied by someone the owner knows: a renter. For example, a Mataró resident rented an apartment to an acquaintance, but was only paid rent for the first three months. He was unable to get the acquaintance to leave for six years, during which time the “renter” and his girlfriend lived rent-free. When the owner learned that that couple went on vacation to Ibiza, he broke into his own property. The owner was served with a denuncia (a formal legal complaint) for coercion when he changed the locks.

There are even cases of a primary residence being occupied by renters, such as in the case of a woman and her toddler in Sevilla who rented a room to a young couple to try to make a little money during the pandemic. The single mom was physically forced from her home by the renters, who later illegally “rented” the property to someone else. The woman had to go through months of legal tangles to get back into her home.

There was the elderly couple in Galicia who had their house okupied by a group of five young people when the couple chose to spend the quarantine in the house of one of their children. When they and their neighbors tried to intervene, the okupas called the police and said they felt their safety was being threatened. The police were eventually able to detain them for breaking and entering.

There was a 94-year-old Basque woman who went to visit her sister last year, and returned home to find her house okupied. She was saved from waiting a month for her first court date because her neighborhood descended on the squatters en masse, to the point where the police had to protect the squatters from violence as they vacated the premises.

There are cases of narcopisos, literally translated as “drug apartments,” like the one an acquaintance of mine—who asked not to be identified by name—experienced in Poble Sec. An investor had purchased the apartment just below his but was taking his time in getting around to remodeling it. In the meantime, a group of okupas moved in, installed a series of crude bunks in one bedroom and marijuana grow beds in the other; they reportedly had up to 20 people in residence there for months. The result was the destruction of common areas in the building—which had to be paid for by the community—and a massive use of water and electricity, which had to be paid for by the owner. The comings and goings of dealers and enforcers, physical fights and threats to neighbors were all commonplace. The community eventually hired a professional team to force the okupas out. “Is that legal?” I asked him. “Does it matter? We have our homes back.” was the reply.

There are the professional okupas who do it for the money, like the infamous Chamo, dubbed “the king of the okupas” by the press in 2019. A number of units had already sold in a newly constructed apartment building in the Horta neighborhood and had families living in them, yet several of the properties remained for sale. In the span of one weekend, Chamo had broken into the building and “rented” some of the empty apartments to eight accomplice families. The desperate owner paid over €2,000 euros to each okupying family to get them to leave, with Chamo taking €6,000 for himself, but not before he had “rented” at least one apartment to an unsuspecting woman from Venezuela, who believed she was signing a legitimate rental contract and who acted in good faith.

These are all destructive, and as a homeowner, frightening examples of okupas. There are those within the okupa community who support this kind of action, but there are also many, many people who do not, and who insist that these kinds of actions do irreparable harm to the squatter movement. 

“Constructive” Okupations

If you didn’t or don’t know much about the okupa situation, you may be wondering why I’ve been referring to it as a movement, when it just sounds like a bunch of bad people doing bad things.

There is another side to the okupa movement, one that has nothing to do with the people who kick 94-year-olds out of their homes. Some are motivated by their personal politics, by their desire to construct an alternate, cooperative, non-capitalist, sometimes anarchist lifestyle, and others are economically vulnerable and don’t have many options within the traditional renting and buying system.

They advocate only victimless okupa situations, when there is a property owned by the city or by a bank that is not being put to use. One such case was a three-story former police station in Gràcia: it was owned by the Patronat Municipal de l'Habitatge and has been okupied for years by a group of young people calling themselves the Associació de Joves de Gràcia (Association of Young People in Gràcia). In 2017 the district of Gràcia offered the space to the young people who had already been living in the abandoned building for years, with support from the neighborhood. In fact, even though the nominal rent has gone unpaid, Colau’s administration spent over 100,000 euros to remodel the space for the group’s use this year. 

There are other examples in Barcelona, like Can Vies in Sants. The building was built in 1879 and is owned by the TMB (public transportation system). It has been okupied since 1997 by as many as 30 people at once, with the stated intention of defending an alternative way of life, collaborative, equal and outside the confines of the capitalist system. The TMB has brought various court cases against the collective living in Can Vies since 2007. The group organizes festivals, protests, workshops and has garnered support from various organizations and individuals in the area. 

Outside of the urban center, there are cases like the house in the middle of the Park of Cosorolla called Can Modolell. It was reportedly sold by a wealthy Catalan family to the head of a porno magazine who later fled the country, leaving his property in the hands of the courts, with a bank in Andorra claiming ownership. The people who live there say they plan to convert the space into a library, skate park and cultural center. Apart from the fact that they have rigged an illegal connection to supply their electricity, they are more or less self-sufficient and believe in the idea of living communally, constructively and autonomously. They’ve remodeled and maintained the grounds, living almost exclusively off of the animals and plants they grow on-site. 

Joni D., a cultural activist who also owned a small record label for many years, has been heavily involved in the squatter movement since the mid 1980s, when he was only 16 years old. He marks a clear distinction between the squatters’ movement and the kinds of criminal activities I’ve described above.

“It is justifiable to occupy whenever there is need and there is an abandoned space available. And this is important, the space must be abandoned,” he says. “No one with a minimum of social conscience will take over a space that it is not—that is not an okupation but a direct, improper appropriation.” Joni believes that the criminal mafias that perpetuate the “bad” okupa reputation, and the real estate speculators who drive property prices up so high that many can’t afford to pay them and in turn have their properties okupied, are both part of the same problem.

“They both contribute to a broken system,” he says. "They both foment fear and hatred of a group of people who are forced by economic necessity to okupy.”

“When a family that needs a home occupies an abandoned space, it’s a constructive act, not only for that family, but also for the whole society. An empty space, a rat's nest, turns into a home. The community gains new neighbors,” he says. Joni points to the increase in okupations, the increased public support for squatters by organizations such as the PAH as proof that society as a whole is not anti-squatter.

“People are motivated by disinformation and fear,” he says. “And the only beneficiaries are the banks, the property speculators, who continue to generate wealth for themselves and have no incentive to fix a twisted system that they profit from, but that hurts the poorest in the community.”

Catalunya is not the only part of Spain dealing with okupas. In Valencia, 10% of its public housing is illegally occupied, and the regional government is taking measures to try to normalize some of these situations in order to avoid putting at-risk families out on the street. There is a waiting list for Valencian public housing of over 9,500 families, but as a result of the notoriously slow legal system, there are numerous properties sitting empty. The okupas say that these properties were built for families in need, and that system is failing them, so it is just and proper for vulnerable people to okupy them. 

A Lack of Information and Confusing Statistics

In spite of the figures quoted by national news outlets, it is surprisingly difficult to find concrete, reliable figures as to exactly how many properties have been okupied in recent years, or by whom, either constructively or destructively. Most figures, like those quoted at the beginning of this article, are estimates. Even the government isn’t quite sure of the numbers, with reports giving fluctuating information. Why?

As the law has not presented a viable solution to this issue, neither for property owners nor for the squatters, there is no one body effectively monitoring the evolution of Spain’s squatter situation. The support that has sprung up on both sides has come from the private sector, such as the pro-okupa Platform for Those Affected by Mortgages, and on the other side, the “desokupa” companies, private organizations which charge a fee for removing okupas from an individual’s property. Their methods range from legitimate mediation and negotiating economic settlements between the okupa and the owner, to forceable removal, which is illegal. 

Most of these companies only work with individuals whose primary or secondary residences have been okupied, as in the destructive okupa cases listed above. They will not represent banks or property speculators.

I spoke with Miki, one of the partners in the company Desokupa, which was one of the first Spanish companies to specialize in returning okupied properties to their rightful owners. They have a 93% success rate and have handled over 4,000 cases, which usually take less than a week to resolve. They, like nearly all desokupation companies, make it clear on their website that they operate within the bounds of the law. 

He says that banks and asset managers often don’t report cases of squatting on their property because it could potentially affect the perceived value of their properties—especially if they are the owners of an entire building or block. 

Private individuals may not want to report a case of squatting for different reasons. In cases involving renters who can’t or won’t pay their rent, the homeowner often attempts to resolve the situation via negotiation or mediation. 

In cases of forcible okupation, if the owner calls the police—whose hands are largely tied unless they catch the okupas in the act of breaking and entering or committing violence—the case is on the record. 

The owner’s only legal options are civil or criminal court proceedings, which can take up to a year, and involve expensive legal fees. If, however, the owner doesn’t report the case and finds a quicker “alternative” way of getting the squatters to leave, the problem is solved and never becomes a part of the official record. These extralegal solutions could land them in legal trouble, but some are willing to take the risk.

All of this contributes to underreporting, which means that the true scope of Spain’s squatter situation is unknown.

Note: *While the 48-hour period of time is not specifically defined in any legal provision, it is a well-established judicial precedent that 48 hours is the period of time for which squatting is considered a flagrant crime of trespassing—on any property whether it be your primary residence or a second home. What happens after 48 hours depends on if the property is your primary residence or not.

Spain’s Ministry of the Interior did introduce a new protocol (which is essentially a set of instructional guidelines, not legislation) on September 17, 2020 which is meant to eliminate the 48-hour standard time limit and facilitate the expulsion of squatters. The new protocol allows police to enter a squatted property more than 48 hours after the fact without a court order as long as the crime is flagrant. For the act to be considered “flagrant” it must comply with the three following requirements: the intrusion had to have happened recently, there must be evidence of the presence of the offender and there must be an urgent need for police intervention. Of course, the terms “recently” and “urgent need” are highly subjective, so it remains to be seen if this new protocol affects any change in the long term.

Want to know more about how desokupa companies work, or more about the specifics of the law? Stay tuned for part two coming next month on Spain’s squatter situation.