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Documentary ‘Soy Tribulete 7’: One block’s fight against Madrid’s housing crisis – out now

Leer el artículo en castellano Spain’s housing crisis has finally come for you. Your home has just been sold to a vulture fund and they want you out. What would you do?  The residents at Calle Tribulete 7 came together and set out on a path of resistance, one that would transform them into a Madrid-wide symbol of the battle for housing rights. The documentary Soy Tribulete 7 (I am Tribulete 7) takes us inside the 107-year-old Lavapiés building and into the lives of an extraordinary community whose looming eviction launched the fight of their lives. The story began in February 2024, when neighbours received a letter telling them their building was being sold to a vulture fund. News spread fast through the barrio and, the moment Leah and Elisa heard, they picked up their cameras and headed straight to the block where over 100 neighbours were still in shock....
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Alejandro’s fight to keep his La Latina home sparks brand-new barrio movement, AV La Chispera

Author: Leah Pattem / Photos:  Dani Piedrabuena When Alejandro was told he would have to leave the home where he hoped to spend his final years, neighbours in La Latina rallied around him – and in the process gave birth to a new community movement called AV La Chispera (The Sparkies). Those who have met Alejandro over the years talk a lot about his passion and his faith, and how much he loves his barrio. At 81, there is one more fight he is determined to win: to stay in his home, and he has joined forces with a new force in the barrio. Over the past few weeks, Alejandro has worked closely with the brand-new neighbourhood association Asociación Vecinal La Chispera, in La Latina, whose members have pushed his campaign so hard that his story has now been covered by El País, La Sexta, El Diario, El Salto, Europa...
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The religious landlords who keep trying evict Madrid’s vulnerable tenants

At around 5.30am, just as the birds began chirruping, members of Madrid’s housing movement began gathering outside Mariano’s home. While the sound of neighbours talking at that hour is not unusual here, the mood on this occasion was tense. Between embraces and murmured complaints about lack of sleep, there was an unmistakable nervousness: after three previous attempts to remove him, Mariano was facing what he feared would be a fourth – and final – eviction order, this time signed off by a religious institution.
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Two of the last historic buildings in Lavapiés have been saved from demolition

Two of the last historic buildings in Lavapiés has been saved from demolition. Just before noon today, following recognition of the buildings’ potential heritage value, police shouted from street level to the construction workers on the roof to stop work immediately. The two-storey buildings on Plaza Nelson Mandela – formerly home to Baobab, Madrid’s first Senegalese restaurant and an old guest house – now stands as a powerful symbol of a rare victory for the barrio.
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The hidden crisis of ‘Invisible Evictions’

Across Spain, we're facing an undeniable affordable housing crisis, where rent hikes consistently outstrip salary increases. More households than ever are struggling with housing costs, spending over 30% of our income on rent. In the whole of Madrid Centro, this is the case, yet national rent regulation laws aimed at high-tension areas are not enforced here as our regional right-wing government has opted out.
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The end of La Canica – the ‘Anti-Bank’ in Madrid

An occupied bank on a main street of Madrid’s Lavapiés neighborhood was evicted after nearly a decade of operation. Following the 15M movement of 2011, sparked in large part by the collapse of banks in Spain, the many vacated premises of failed banks became prime targets for occupations. The okupa La Canica launched with a utopian anti-capitalist mission – to replace the monetary system itself with a local community-based currency.
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Legendary Lavapiés shoe shop closes permanently with a fiesta the barrio will never forget

Foreword: The building in which the oldest shoe shop in Lavapiés, Calzados Vinigon, was purchased by a vulture fund and, being unable to pay a higher rent, María Jesús has been forced to close permanently. What this shoe shop meant to the barrio echoes a story that has been told too many times in Madrid, but I'm telling it again because it is one of the many acts of resistance we have against the normalisation of the death of small businesses.
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Two sisters take their own lives hours before being evicted

In their apartment on Calle Navas de Tolosa, officers found a letter ordering the first attempt at their eviction for non-payment of rent. The sisters were living in a flat owned by a private landlord, who filed a lawsuit in May 2023 for almost two years of non-payment for which he was owed €9,000, according to El País. The delayed payment coincided with the passing of their mother in February 2021 after she contracted Covid.
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Meet the Lavapiés neighbours facing eviction by a film company

Buenavista 25 and Zurita 22 are the addresses of two charming residential buildings in Lavapiés that stand back-to-back on parallel streets. They’re connected by a small patio, where residents of the 10 flats exchange pleasantries while hanging their washing out to dry. However, in mid-march, pleasantries turned to organising when tenants learned that both of their buildings had been bought by film production company Gloriamundi Producciones. The corporation is now actively pressuring tenants to leave, but they have no plans on leaving their memories – not of one year nor a lifetime – behind.
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Music and protest against the eviction of Tribulete 7, Lavapiés

No one does protest like the neighbours of Lavapiés. On Saturday 3 February, 10 bands played on the stage of the neighbours: in the kitchens, living rooms and doorways of @vecinostribulete7 bringing an unprecedented concert to a building of 50 flats that are set to be evicted.
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52 flats at Tribulete 7 are facing mass eviction but tenants are fighting back

José, 71, is a lifelong tenant of Calle Tribulete 7 in Lavapiés. His daughter Blanca, who José calls ‘Blankita’, spent the first 30 years of her life here. Despite no longer living here, she has taken up the mantle – along with her mother Blanca – of defending the apartment in which her parents have lived for more than 40 years.