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Life under lockdown in a Greek refugee camp

"There's nothing to do", explains Nabil (not his real name). "We just wake up, eat and sleep". Nabil, a 22-year-old Syrian refugee, has been living in the Nea Kavala camp in northern Greece, just next to the Macedonian border for almost one year.

Empty Spain: The Valley of Fornela

Just before the pandemic, photojournalist Melanie Guil visited a small Spanish town in León that, for decades, has been fading from the map. She asked the residents' of Fornela tell us their stories, and here they are.

As Lavapiés’ food banks endure, it’s time to get involved

Vecinas de Lavapiés are an incredible group of neighbours serving daily meals and weekly food supplies to their fellow neighbours. They're the little sister of La Cuba, one of Lavapiés' first Covid-19 relief food banks, and Vecinas have joined forced with Plaza Solidaria, a long-standing local association you may have spotted distributing hot food on Plaza de Tirso de Molina over the years.

Madrid’s ‘Tourist Saviour Complex’

Just as Spain was finally starting to recover from its last financial crisis, the deepest recession we’ve ever witnessed has only just begun. Poverty, inequality and reliance on precarious work inflicted by a decade of government-imposed austerity remains all around us, and the few tourists that trickle in today – just as their pre-pandemic forefathers did – continue to feed into this.

#RegularizaciónYa: Spain’s anti-racism and anti-colonialism movement

Immigrant exploitation is all around us. Many of Spain's 600,000 undocumented migrants are essential workers, They pick Europe's vegetables and keep them cheap, they take care of the elderly, clean the hospitals, deliver us food, build our homes and allow us to stay confined in them during the pandemic. Institutional exploitation of immigrants must stop, and that is exactly what Regularización Ya are here to do. 

Madrid Activism: Bilingual list of local grass-roots groups

Here you have an ever-growing list of Madrid grass-roots groups campaigning locally for a better world. Whether you're new to activism or have been campaigning passionately since you could first hold a banner, we hope this resource will be useful to you.

We’re running out of time to abolish Spain’s oppressive 2015 ‘Gag Law’

One hot summer night in 2015, protestors gathered outside Congress, quietly sitting cross-legged on the pavement with blue gags tied around their mouths and with their hands behind their backs. Their timing was key, protesting until the clock struck midnight on Wednesday 1 July – the moment their actions would suddenly become unlawful.

The shrapnel-scarred bungalow challenging Spain’s civil war amnesia

It is only by chance that a small bungalow in Madrid bearing the scars of Nazi shelling still survives. And it is only by pure coincidence that, just a decade ago, this fact came to light when photographer and archeologist Jose Latova stumbled across a photograph taken by the Hungarian war photographer Robert Capa. Its residents share their stories.