Two years ago, in Pamplona we began to organize a group of individuals in the Haritu mutual assistance network with the aim of collectively facing the widespread impoverishment of the working class. Due to the increasing difficulties of access to food and housing, we created the Haritu Solidarity Warehouse and the Housing Union.

The Solidarity Store already has 110 participants and relies on the fortnightly meetings we hold in the various supermarkets of the city. We also have an orchard and an olive grove for self-management. We meet people with different social and political trajectories. This implies a basic exercise of mutual understanding, such as that of languages (wolof, Arabic, French, Basque or Spanish), the practices of militancy and the different ways of thinking, feeling and doing.

The Housing Union has organized itself with tenants in conflict with the homeowner. We have advised and guaranteed their rights with dozens of tenants. Several evictions have been paralysed, all for rent. All kinds of problems have been reported. We will not fail to say that housing is basic for housing development and conservation. However, access to housing is increasingly restricted for many. In Navarre alone, rentals have grown by 40% in the last seven years. Access conditions hinder access to a home for people in vulnerable situations or in precarious positions.

Growth in tourist and temporary use of housing allows owners to multiply their profits (mainly medium and small owners) and contributes to higher prices. Our cities are being looted. To this must be added the growing presence of investment funds in housing management. This is the case of Concepción in Pamplona, which has managed eleven rentals and is trying to drown its neighbours with unjustified changes in rental contracts.

In addition, the unprecedented supply and the increase in fuels, unemployment, low wages, the increase in the price of the shopping cart, especially the increase in the burden of care adapted to women…, make living conditions increasingly worse and especially in the racialized population in an irregular situation. On the other hand, we can see that business people, banks and reviewers add to their profits. According to data provided by Intermón Oxfam, 1 per cent of the world's population accounts for 63 per cent of the world's wealth produced. Let us add to all this ecological decay, the global context, border deaths and the energy crisis. We have no reason to keep going.

In Haritto we have been fighting collectively for the problems of basic needs and housing for two years. Two years working together with other groups in the formation of the community through the self-organization of the tissues, strengthening ties and working in dynamics of collaboration. Examples of this are the anti-racist basketball and soccer world of Pamplona, the commitment to the deployment of the network in the neighborhoods of Pamplona or the organization of other union and collaborative housing in Hego Euskal Herria.

We denounce for two years the structural causes of housing commodification, inequality in access to resources, class oppression, institutional racism, violence against women. Two years and here it goes… because the important thing is not to distribute the cake, but to change the recipe.

So on Sunday, January 29, at 13:00, from the Plaza de San Francisco de Pamplona In defense of basic needs and housing, organization! We invite you to the pasacalles that will come out under the motto and the subsequent food that will be held in Zabaldi.

Organize and collaborate!

Members of the Haritu mutual assistance network

Asier Calvo Álvarez de Arkaia, Daniel Fuentes López, Oihana Idoate Errea, Ane Martínez Echeverría, Amaia Prieto Arratibel