On September 23, 2020 we participated in the Auzogune del Casco Viejo. The neighborhood is the space for participation proposed by the City of Vitoria-Gasteiz, where citizens, municipal technicians, associations and politicians exchange opinions. The first item on the agenda briefly explains to us that the Haurren Auzoa project is not being carried out as a result of the pandemic, as budgets were blocked and other expenditure prioritised. And that is understandable, given all that is going on, we would understand it if this were the only period in which there was a delay, the only period in which the pledge has not been fulfilled, the only period in which it was used... We have therefore decided to move away from the project. We don't want, we give up. And when this was explained to him, the councilman, furious, told us: - How? What do you not want? ".

Well, no. For us, that was what was lacking in order for it to overflow. And this is not because we do not think that in our neighborhood there are other public investment priorities in this situation, for example, housing rehabilitation aid for the most needy neighbors. The main reason is that we have been exhausted. The truth is that they have taken away our desire to participate.

In 2017, several parents gathered to reflect on the autonomy of boys and girls. That year, at the popular festivities of Zahaz Harroko, we invited neighbors to reflect with each other. Inspired by the pedagogue Francesco Tonucci and his children's book The City of Children. We also started to dream, with a neighborhood rich in games, with a neighborhood that allows us to experiment, create, manipulate and above all play. We thought it would be interesting to ask boys and girls to know what's more.

It's the place they like, and most importantly, it's thinking that if kids built a small part of the neighborhood from the very beginning, they would take care of it and pamper it. We got our hands on it and we had the opportunity to present the initiative to the Hobetuz programme of the City Hall. We had a debate: some of us imagined a little more modest, done in auzolan; others, without the involvement of the City Hall, we saw that it would be very difficult to change some place... In the end, we started the second option and our tour was started with the participation service of the City Hall. Winning in 2018 meant that the process was going to take place in 2018 in order to be able to do the work in 2018-2019, as this is how these issues are included in the budgets.

In the last quarter of 2017 we held open meetings and designed a process of participation with the children of the neighborhood. We talked to the Goian association, to the association of parents of Ramón Bajo school and to the management of the center, and all of them wanted to participate in this adventure. It looked great. We contacted the Nondik study, a group of architects working in architecture and pedagogy on the same street of the school, and we also contacted the Txatxilipurdi association, because of their experience in participatory processes with boys and girls, because we thought we could learn a lot from them. Haurren Auzoa’s participation process was not that of four post-it and one survey.

In March 2018, a previous diagnosis of the spaces was made: topography, borders, relationship with the environment, materials... Subsequently, observational sessions were held with children of early childhood education in the three selected spaces. We wanted to see which spaces were used and which were not, where the conflicts occurred, what type of games propitiated the spaces, what the characteristics of the space itself were, depending on the number of participants, gender, etc. The psychomotor and anthropologists of the neighborhood also participated in the volunteers, who subsequently systematized all the information collected in these sessions.

In April, we held participatory workshops aimed at elementary school children, and to do so, all the people who wanted to participate as dynamizers in the workshops were trained: we talked about the participation and culture of childhood, how to listen and not interfere in children’s proposals, how to propose the workshops… we went from the sleep phase to the consensus phase. We had everything ready.

The workshops were held in May 2018 and involved 225 people. Most were elementary school boys and girls, but also the tutors of Ramón Bajo and the young people of Goian, among others. For three days, they talked about the problems that were in our squares, the homes of the trees of dreams, the zip lines or the labyrinths -- they agreed and built a model for each square.

In June 2018 we held an exhibition at the civic center. We invite 37 elderly people from the Aurora and Arquillos residences, 20 parents, 36 women from women's associations, 45 people from the neighborhood's associations, fourteen people from functional diversity associations. All contributions were collected and with all this a final project was elaborated: One architectural proposal for Rafa Square, another for Martín Ttipi and another for the Etxanobe Park. At the end of the course, we present the project in public in the neighborhood and in the participation service. The tongue hanging, but with the feeling of having done a great job.

The 2018-2019 course started, we already had our part made, and we had in mind the spring of 2019, to see if it would be possible to plant plants or paint with children the structures of the park.

While we were waiting for someone to say something, we were still presenting our project at Auzogunea, specifically in January 2019. In March 2019 we met with the urban planning and participation technicians and proposed to change a concrete plaza, the Rafa Square. We knew that the project of transformation of the three spaces was ambitious and we made some proposals to the project that they brought.

He began to notice the electoral environment, and from the participation service we were told that they were prioritizing other projects. We are still waiting. In July they reconvened with us and taught us the final draft, which included some of the contributions.

Start the 2019-2020 course. It was said that it was not possible to carry out the work that year, since there were no specifications yet. The truth is that the energy of the dynamizing group had already weakened. In October 2019 he reappeared in Auzogunea. We were still not aware of the tendering deadlines.

From our initiative we wanted to talk about the deadlines for the works and the participation of children and it seemed important, on the other hand, to inform the residents of the plaza, the youth assembly of the Gaztetxe and the people of Berakah, neighboring and nearby neighbours.

In November 2019, El Correo published news with images of the project, not to mention the Children's Neighborhood. To sell the project, reference was made to the “great change that is about to reach the Casco Viejo”, “within a rehabilitation plan”, and with the title “The Casco Viejo is modernized”. He went into a state of panic.

We had a new meeting with the participation technicians and, of course, the news was very poorly on the road, that it did not respect the participatory process, that the times were not what we wanted, that from now on the departments of Hobetuz could be managed more quickly. In any case, what will happen from now on is not of much interest to us, because we have little enthusiasm…

But our project won Hobetuz 2017, the top budget for 2019. When the year was about to end, we had to start again, in the hope of approving the budgets for 2020.

The next meeting we had to have in March 2020 was to talk about pleadings, deadlines, etc., or perhaps not, who knows. But the pandemic came and with it the confinement, the dead, the masks and the distances, you don't think we haven't noticed them. We understand that in this situation there are other priority expenses such as primary care, more teachers, dining room monitors, assistance to the rehabilitation of housing... which can be some ideas.

As we explained at the beginning, what has really happened is that we have been exhausted. We wanted meaningful learning, and that's how it has been. These kinds of long participatory processes cannot be done with children, who lose all meaning; the feeling of participating, deciding and acting accordingly disappears. A participatory process cannot be carried out without a political culture of participation, a unified management of information and deadlines, as one party is continuously dependent on the other and ends up disappointed, tired, powerless.

That is why we are moving away from the works planned for Rafa Square. If it is done, it will not be part of the Haurren Auzoa initiative, it will not be the end of a participatory project of the neighborhood. We lower our expectations: for these years it is enough to safely use Rafa Square, Etxanobe, Martin Ttipia, Santa Maria Square or the El Campillo Court. We do not want spectacular places. We want our sons and daughters to play there, without being hit by cars, that if it rains you can eat the snack in the Campillo and that safety protocols can be complied with in all of them.

This concludes the Haurren Auzoa initiative. A hug and even see her in the neighborhood.