Errekaleor is a neighbourhood on the periphery of Vitoria-Gasteiz, in the Basque Country, Spain. It sits on the plateau created by the Errekaleor river, which is part of the Green Belt of Vitoria-Gasteiz. From 2013 onwards, the area was occupied by squatters and became known as Errekaleor Bizirik (Errekaleor Alive). The project is based on the principles of workers' self-management (autogestión), consensus based decision making, feminism, anti-capitalism and Basque cultural re-invigoration. The neighbourhood is the largest occupied space of its type on the Iberian Peninsula, with over 10 hectares of land and 150 inhabitants. Residents include children, the elderly, blue-collar workers, the unemployed, students, and teachers. The project includes an organic farm of 2 hectares, a bakery, a bar, a social centre, a library, a theatre, a free shop, a recording studio, and other projects.
The area is made up of 32 blocks (Basque: 'bloke', Spanish: 'bloques') that hold six apartments each, as well as a number of buildings that were built as part of the original development, such as a school, church and shops, which have now been renovated by the Errekaleor Bizirik community. The neighbourhood has existed since the 1950s, but fell into disrepair and was largely abandoned after the Vitoria-Gasteiz city government evicted the original residents in order to develop the area with modern apartment complexes. Due to the European debt crisis, these plans were never carried out, and the area was almost entirely unused for years before the occupation began.
Creation of Errekaleor
In the 1950s, the neighbourhood was built in order to provide housing for the workers who were relocated in the city, having been moved from Andalucia, Castile and León and Extremadura due to an industrialization program in Francoist Spain. 1200 people lived in the neighbourhood. Many of its residents were involved in labour struggles after the transition to democracy which began in 1975. During a city-wide labour strike, Romualdo Barroso Chaparro, a 19 year old resident of Errekaleor, was one of five people killed in a police massacre in 1976, giving the neighbourhood a distinctly militant reputation.
Redevelopment plans
As time went by and the city limit expanded to the edge of Errekaleor, this land increasingly became seen as a valuable resource by the city and developers. In the 1990s and early 2000s the Spanish housing boom led to increased development on the outskirts of the city as part of Vitoria's General Urban Planning Plan. This process created fifteen new sectors of development where entire neighbourhoods were built from scratch. One of these designated neighbourhoods was Errekaleor, and the city began to negotiate with the residents in order to buy their properties and redevelop. In 2002, the Vitoria-Gasteiz city council headed by the Popular Party officially decided to demolish the neighbourhood.
By 2010 the city had finalized their proposals, and used their power of expropriation against the few remaining residents of the neighbourhood in order to clear the way for the project. The new plan was for 1,511 new apartments in 4 buildings surrounding a park of 1.7 acres, designed by Ramón López de Ludo, VC Architects, and Antonio Vélez. During this period the neighbourhood residents resisted the process, mounting various legal challenges and repeatedly voting against their proposed relocation. However, by early 2010 there only remained 35 families who had refused to leave and the public development company Ensanche 21 began the final eviction processes.
By October 2010, the European debt crisis had become so bad that the city council and Ensanche 21 decided to freeze the project. Without money or political capital behind the project, the plans for development stopped. By this point in time, Ensanche 21 and the city had succeeded in evicting all but 15 families, and planned to finish the eviction process in 2011 even though no development would take place. As the crisis continued and the project remained on hold, the neighbourhood fell into disrepair and the remaining families continued to leave little by little. By 2013, there were only 10 individuals living in the neighbourhood and almost all of the houses had been stripped of copper and other valuable materials.
Errekaleor Bizirik
Occupation
On 3 September 2013, a group of university students squatted in one of the 32 apartment blocks with the permission of the few inhabitants that remained in the neighbourhood. The project quickly grew to 150 participants at the end of 2016, making it the biggest squatter-occupied space on the Iberian Peninsula.