- They have acquired the 18th century building located on the 54th Major Street, next to the current bookstore of Katakrak. “In this building there will be no hostels, no luxury hotels, no housing that the area’s neighbors could not afford, here we are going to build urban land,” they point out when they announce their purchase on Wednesday morning.
The Katakrak bookstore and the financial cooperative Koop57 purchased a complete building on Calle Mayor Number 54 in Pamplona. The house consists of several floors adding a total area of 1,500 square meters and a patio of almost 500 square meters. The property is located next to the building where the Katakrak library is located and for decades was owned by the Huarte-Solchaga family.
In the public presentation held this Wednesday, it is explained that in the autumn of 2023 the building was acquired from the beginning of the eighteenth century, for which the “diplomatic capacity” of Katakrak, the “collective financial capacity” of the cooperative partners of Koop57 and the consolidated network of inter-cooperation in the Basque Country have been fundamental.
The house consists of several floors adding a total area of 1,500 square meters and a patio of almost 500 square meters
They buy the building to “liberate real estate speculation and free land from the city.” They consider it essential to curb the tourist pressure they endure in Pamplona, “at least in a few square meters”. In fact, they claim that the intention of previous shoppers was to build tourist apartments and luxury homes: “Expropriation of an already beaten neighborhood.”
The function they will give to the building has not yet been clarified, but the function for which it will not be: “In this building there will be no hostels, no luxury hotels, no housing that the area’s neighbors could not afford, here we will build urban land.” Thus, after long months of work and negotiations, the future of the historic house in the heart of Pamplona takes a new direction.
They claim that the intention of the previous shoppers was to build tourist apartments and luxury houses: “Expropriation of an already beaten neighborhood.”
Ethical finance and assembly political enterprise
Koop57 seeks ethical and solidarity financial services in line with the transformative social economy. Through popular savings it offers credits for the social project, “like the one that brings us here today,” they explain. It already has 328 partners in Euskal Herria, but they have demonstrated their intention to be “more and more”.
For its part, Katakrak is defined as a “political enterprise”, led by a workers’ cooperative and an assembly, with the economic support of more than 350 members. The bookstore opened its doors in 2013 and for ten years has become the largest bookstore in Pamplona, with 22,000 copies. In addition, it has a canteen that works with sustainable socio-ecological values and publishes books in Basque and Spanish.