Barcelona tenants launch rent strike against investment fund

Four residents of the Bloc Papallona apartment building in Barcelona's Esquerra de l'Eixample neighborhood launched a rent strike Thursday against the building's owner, the investment fund New Amsterdam Developers (NAD). 

Anna Olestí, a spokesperson for the Socialist Housing Union of Catalonia (SHSC) and a resident of the building, announced the strike. She said it is a way "to stop financing the profiteering of a 'vulture fund' whose only goal is to profit from our homes."

After more than two years of a union campaign against the NAD fund, "now was the time to take the next step," she said, adding that the strike is meant to be a "collective union tool."

While there are precedents led by the Tenants' Union, Olestí said the Bloc Papallona action is the first measure of its kind in Barcelona in many years. 

The move has two goals. The first is "to create an economic problem" for the Dutch fund "in order to force them to accept a sale price well below market value." The second is "maximizing pressure" on the city government, because "negotiating calmly in offices, behind closed doors, achieves nothing." 

In her view, people "cannot trust" political parties at the moment, because "none of them" represent the interests of the working class.

Olestí said that if Barcelona City Council expropriates the building, ensuring "not a single euro of profit" for the current owners, it should set up indefinite lease agreements with no rent increases. Vacant apartments should be made available "immediately" to people in need, with rent set at less than 30% of their income.

Another resident, Corina, who has lived in the Modernist building since 2008 and is facing eviction, said the residents' demands are "the bare minimum." She said they simply want "to be able to live in our own homes," and acknowledged that the street protests of recent days gave them the "impetus" to begin withholding monthly rent payments.

Olestí, who has lived in the building for four years, said the union also intends to "socialize" the rent strike by extending it to other NAD buildings and to other groups "to combat speculation."

In more than two years of fighting NAD, the building's tenants have prevented any evictions and halted the development of "co-living" spaces, Olestí said. She criticized the fund for "crossing every red line" and attempting "to turn a city landmark into a de facto hotel." 

"With this objective, they have caused damage" to the 1912 building, which is listed as a cultural asset of local interest.