Asked how the situation is understood, Martínez de Agirre has proposed a broader and broader view. “First, the media started to give bad news about the neighborhood, criminalizing an entire area. That's where they started a long time ago. Then, some have encouraged the neighbors to go out on the street under the guise of the saddles, increasing the conflict. Finally, in the last few weeks, ads from housing agencies have appeared in the portals to ask residents to buy apartments. We are discovering that everything has a concrete meaning.”

Martínez de Agirre highlights two types of interest: “political”, because the mobilizations benefit sectors of the extreme right and the extreme right; and “economic”, to do business gentrifying the neighborhood. In fact, Errota is one of the most impoverished neighborhoods in the city, with significant deficiencies in infrastructure or around 200 empty spaces. He says that the situation is repeated in several cities of Euskal Herria and Europe, and that the neighborhood is “at a turning point”. “Now is the time to promote residents’ lives, to encourage the creation of shops for neighbors, to work together and to extol diversity. In Europe, in some neighborhoods they have fed it and increased it, in others they have not, and they have totally devalued it.”

“To do so, the City Hall has to help,” Arbulu insisted, “to put social services, to increase resources, to help the empty premises recover their lives.” He says there is a crime problem, “but the main cause is that more and more people are living without the minimum resources to live.” He believes that the consequences will not disappear if the original problem is not solved.

Mobilisations

The mobilizations have generated great concern in the association of neighbors and tension in the neighborhood. The promoters and the rest of the neighbors who have attended the concentration have been differentiated by the members of the association. They have ensured that the promoters and "stakeholders" include sectors of extreme right and extreme right and political parties, or private security companies that have approached the association to offer their services. Regarding the others, “most are normal people in the neighborhood,” says Martínez de Agirre, “who is worried or scared, I understand that it is not nice to have a conflict zone under the house”. Arbulu speaks of frustration: “Above all, they go to demonstrations out of frustration, the situation has overwhelmed them, they have seen an appeal and they have said, ‘At least I am going to do something’.

In the last two weeks the organizers have tried to jump from neighborhood to city, but the number of citizens has dropped considerably, they have not reached 100 and media attention has not been reduced.

City Hall

Since the start of the mobilizations, the association of neighbors has held meetings with the municipal representatives of the parties PSE and EH Bildu. They say that they are "surprised" by the PSE, which governs with the support of the PNV. They agreed on the diagnosis that the solution should be comprehensive and for the whole neighborhood, not only focusing on the concrete conflict of the bars, but also the key are the social resources, which El Correo and PP are feeding the mobilizations... Two days after that meeting, Mayor Maider Etxebarria gave a press conference announcing that the only measure taken was to expand the presence and number of police officers, emphasizing that "these people have no place" in Vitoria-Gasteiz.

They have explained that EH Bildu showed them his “willingness to cooperate”, “but they seem to be waiting to see in what direction the conflict is heading.” The neighbourhood association proposed to EH Bildu to table a budget amendment “to ask for resources, we will see”.

Martinez de Agirre has called for "courage" from the two parties in the Congress of Deputies. “The association has emerged knowing how to make a speech that some neighbors will oppose. They should also make some expression, pedagogy in the face of the outermost messages.”

The association has asked both parties and the PNV to do the same before mobilizations begin. Create the conditions for vacant lots and places to welcome shops and activities, buy some and put social services in them, provide the association of neighbors with a public space that can pick up the concerns of the neighbors, make a health center that is a historical claim ... and resources for the young people who are on the street today, so they can build a life. “How will you integrate if you don’t have a roof to live?” says Arbulu.

Police and the media

The members of the neighborhood association say that the police presence in the neighborhood has increased a lot and is continuous. They believe that the work of the Police can be “a branch of many”, but not the most important, as is being proposed: “If the solution was to increase the number of police officers, the problem would already be solved,” Arbulu explained.

Besides not being a guarantee for security, they have added that the police can also create insecurity in the area. Seeing cars constantly and the great and impressive intervention in any conflict “feeds the imaginary of what the neighborhood is the Bronx,” says Arbulu. “They are effective, not effective,” added Martínez de Agirre.

To this we must add that the police for some neighbors can be a source of fear – racialized, undocumented, members of popular movements... – among others, because racial identifications and questionings are frequent, or because the Ertzaintza and especially the Municipal Police have often acted with violence, especially against racialized young people, but also targets who have been accused of such violence or tried to take images.

With neighborhood associations and popular movements

What happened at the Molino, although without organized racist mobilization, has occurred earlier in the neighborhoods of Arana and Casco Viejo in the capital of Alavesa. Therefore, in October 2023, the meetings of these three neighborhoods and the associations of residents of Judimendi began, with the aim of giving a community exit to the conflicts. Those meetings were completed, but now cooperation and the network have been reactivated, as well as other broader forms.

Last year, eight neighborhood associations and more than twenty people from popular movements -- migrants, more racialized Gasteiztars, feminists, neighborhoods -- met to discuss what to do.

Three lines of work were agreed. The first, institutional, “to bring to the City Hall and to the parties our views and proposals”. Secondly, to work on the street level, completing two protocols: one preventive, to establish contact before there are conflicts, for example, with young people who have occupied a market or with neighbors in the area; and the other, to foresee the response in case of conflict. The third and final line would be to work on racism and exclusion in a broader perspective. The Gora Gasteiz initiative, which led to the exclusion of racist Javier Maroto from pp in the Mayor's office of the capital of Alavesa, could be a reference.

Neighborhood associations in general do not live their best times, the Molino is no exception, and in recent weeks their members have passed over work and emotions. But Arbulu and Martínez de Agirre are optimistic because they believe that the broad framework they have woven will bear fruit, and although they have had tensions with some neighbours, others have approached to offer help. “It’s also being nice to feel that solidarity.”