The City of Vitoria-Gasteiz will implement a smart video surveillance system: In total, there will be more than 100 cameras and it seems that seventeen of them will soon be installed. The City Hall has awarded the company Insitel the installation of these cameras with an investment of about 117,000 euros. Members of the Socialist Youth Coordinator (GKS) have stressed that “citizen security is an excuse” for implementing the new smart system and have denounced that it is another mechanism for increasing social control.

The GKS in Vitoria has carried out a massive mobilisation on Saturday, not the House. Working youth against social control. They denounce that this massive implantation of chambers is not the only municipal measure to strengthen social control: They point out that the increase in the number of local police officers and the renovation of their equipment, as well as the increase of new control sensors monitored with mobile phones, must be understood in the same sense. Thus, they stress that all these resources are used to “spy on and punish the performance of the proletariat”.

Acts of sabotage

In recent weeks, Hala Bedi has announced that in Vitoria-Gasteiz action has been taken against the cameras to denounce the upward trend in social control. Sabotage has been carried out against some security cameras and wall and window painting: The City Hall of Vitoria-Gasteiz and Electro Alavesa have been the companies that have been responsible for the growing social control.

100 cameras

At the beginning of the legislature, Security Councilor Iñaki Gurtubai said at a press conference to present the program of his department that the commitment of the municipal government is to implement in the next few years a hundred chambers throughout the city. 17 of them will shortly be implemented in: Plaza de la Virgen Blanca, Plaza Nueva, Paseo del Portico, Cuesta de San Francisco, Guangzhou of Bakardade and Guangzhou of San Francisco Javier.

In Legazpi against cameras

Also in Legazpi (Gipuzkoa), after several weeks of signalling the cameras installed by the City Hall, dozens of young people, called by the SGG of Goierri, denounced in the concentration held on Friday that the City Hall "has prioritized the increase of mechanisms of social control over the use of the resources available for social welfare", "deepening the trend based on fundamental rights". They indicate that they will continue to fight until the City Hall withdraws the cameras.