Madrid City Council indifference leads to imminent eviction of La Eskalera Karakola Feminist Social Center
As many of you already know
for the last few years we have been demanding the expropriation of the
building number 40 Embajadores
(Madrid), the present location of la Eskalera Karakola, with the aim of
restoring once and for all this singular building and opening a feminist
self-organized social centre in adequate conditions: a place for participation,
politics, arts, co-operation, etc. for women. To realize this, a political
commitment from the Council as well as an agreement with the buildingıs present
owner is indispensable.
After all, hasnıt the City
Council recently announced the expropriation of abandoned buildings? Havenıt
they declared themselves sensitive to the housing issue, to the citizen
participation issue, even to the womenıs issue? Havenıt they asserted,
obviously just for advertising purposes, the importance of houses, social
spaces and public installations? Or is the Plan Gallardón (promoted by Madridıs
mayor) once again a big trick for the headlines without any concrete measures
backing it?
Recently the owner of the
building has broken negotiations with the Administration and is ready to sell
to a private buyer, leaving us in the street and thus evicting a project which
has been promoting feminist collective criticism and action for eight years.
There will be a trial and we
will be imputed. What for? For use of the space, its partial restoration,
various activities, uncertain experiments, an invitation to think and act upon
life, the neighborhood, the city. And what will the penalty be? Invisibility,
precariousness, speculation, sadness, unaffordable apartments in the city
centre, dispersion?
We invite you to support our
initiative and DEMAND INMEDIATE AND DEFINITIVE RELOCATION OF THE PROJECT,
together with La Biblio in a
building with the characteristics that both projects need. And to report
the celebrated Plan Gallardón as another big swindle of this politics of the
spectacle.
FOR A SELF-ORGANIZED FEMINIST SOCIAL CENTER
LA ESKALERA KARAKOLA
September 2004
We ask you to spread this message and make a call to the Dept. of Urban
Planning demanding a solution to this situation
tel. (0034)
915881215/ 915881180
e-mail: cg@urbanismo.munimadrid.es