In the Getxo City Hall there are a total of seven stations, of which only six are left. The seventh, officially called Getxo-Ibarbengoa, has been built since 2011, but a train has never stopped, its platforms have never known the influx of travelers. They call it the "ghost" of the station. It is located in an unusual place, surrounded by fields that only have four or five houses.

In order to fulfil the wishes of the authorities, underground parking for 300 vehicles will be provided, or it should be provided, next to the Ibarbengoa station, in the area called Tosu. Instead, some orchards, a banner and a cottage make up the landscape that Tosu offers to metro travelers. There have also been tents on one occasion. Since 2011, when the station ended, there has always been someone occupying the camp, fighting to paralyze the parking project.

Since that time when a group of getxotarras began to share space with cows spending the day eating grass, the appearance of the Tosuko camper has changed a lot. Now there are no cows, and a part of the meadow has been occupied by the orchards, and also by some trees, all because of the okupas. A large caset makes the function of housing storage, there is a smaller one for the bathroom. Nagore and Gorka from the Tosu Betirako Assembly welcome us in the large cottage.

Relocation plan for another 20,000 inhabitants

“In 2007 the Partial Territorial Plan of the metropolitan Bilbao was presented, which also included Uribe Kosta,” explains Gorka, “specifically, the construction of 30,000 houses in the area was planned, of which 8,000 were located in Getxo”. Most were expected in the Andra Mari neighborhood, which the surrounding ones simply call Getxo, in an environment that has preserved most of its scarce green spaces, on the border with Berango.

“Andra Mari has always been a rural environment,” says Gorka. “Little by little it has been urbanizing, and over time houses and other dwellings have been built alongside the dwellings, but some rural areas have been preserved”. In this context, the plan for the construction of 8,000 homes was announced. “It is a new Areeta, with a capacity for 20,000 inhabitants, and all the infrastructures that this entails.” The members of Tosu Betirako remember that the answer came quickly. By then, Andra Mari already had a powerful resident association. Over 3,000 people participated in a demonstration against the urbanization aspirations that took place in 2007 in Bilbao.

In addition to the demonstration of strength on the street, the Association of Neighbors of Andra Mari managed to break the internal balance of the consistory. Faced with the illegality of the Abertzale left, they asked for a vote for the Greens, and they got a lot of votes in the neighborhood. As always the PNV won the elections, but with a narrower margin than usual, and seeing that it did not have enough strength in the consistory, it rejected the project of building 8,000 homes waiting for better times. Soon after, the crisis was triggered by the outbreak of the real estate bubble. In the following years the project was translated, but to a lesser extent.

Despite the suspension of the execution of the cement fields, the construction of the Ibarbengoa station began in 2008. “It was an old demand from the neighbors that the railroad would crumble in Anda Marin,” says Nagore of the Tosu Perpetual Assembly, “they did, but they also demolished the old Getxo station and built another in Bidezabal, closer to Algorta and, therefore, further away from the homes of many neighbors. To start building Ibarbengoa’s was an excuse for replacing the old station, but it was clearly no more than an excuse, because it is not yet open.” According to the opponents of the Ibarbengoa parking lot, both the station and the parking are only the first steps to open the door to the urbanization of the surroundings.

To ease traffic or otherwise?

The Tour parking is a project promoted by the Bizkaia Transport Consortium. The mayor of Getxo, the jeltzale Imanol Landa, is also a member of the General Council of this institution, and the government team of the City Hall fully supports the project. We have worked hard to get in touch with the councillor of Urbanismo, Joseba Arrangi, to get his opinion in detail, but the municipal sources have sent us a press release a few months ago, in which they tell us that everything they have to say is there.

In the note, the Getxo government team expresses its “total support” for the “project to open the suburban parking and the new Ibarbengoa Metro station, as it is evident that it will favor Getxo and Uribe Costa in the area of mobility and the environment”.

In Getxo the metro is more frequent than in other localities in the region. According to the City Hall, providing a space to leave the car will allow many citizens to enjoy this frequency at a very low price – 70 cents a day to leave the vehicle – which will allow many drivers not to access the centre of Getxo and, in general, to remove many cars from the roads. According to the Bizkaia Transport Consortium, “this option that combines public transport and the car is increasingly demanded by the public”.

The members of the Tosu Betirako Assembly do not agree: “We believe that the construction of a parking lot is never to remove the cars from the roads, but is another infrastructure for the use of the car,” says Nagore. “Nearby they made a highway to fix the traffic jams and did not repair them; now the parking… They are always on the same excuse.” By the way, they want to make it clear that they are not against the opening of the Ibarbengoa station, “because it is finally done”. But for the administration it is essential to build a parking lot before the opening of the station.

Participate yes, but how?

The current General Urban Management Plan of Getxo (PGOU) dates from 2001 and declares to be urbanizable to the entire City Hall, except for the coastline that is legally intangible and the golf course located in Andra Mari. In this context, the project to build 8,000 houses made complete sense, but as we have seen, in 2007 the City Hall had no choice but to leave them in a drawer. Years later, it opened a participatory process to work on alternatives, which lasted from 2011 to 2015.

One of the participants in this process is Iñigo Elortegi, a member of the Getxo Auzokideak platform. “The government team put three options on the table: what was optimistic from their point of view was to make 8,000 homes; the moderate between 2,500 and 4,000; and the pessimists between 2,000. They were in favor of the moderate.” Nothing further down. But 55% of the people who participated in the process chose the so-called “zero development”, although it was not among the initial options: Do not build new housing in Getxo in the period 2013-2017, and use the 3,500 empty and in conditions of use in the City Hall to make the new offer. According to Elortegi, the team in charge of drafting the project did not consider the possibility, which caused more than half of the participants to leave the process.

“They’re not going to build 8,000 homes, but 4,000 yes, that’s what the PNV is doing,” says Elortegi. It is not easy, nor does it want to renew the PGOU because to do so it would have to negotiate with EH Bildu and Podemos in the city hall. He is surely waiting for better times, to see if he achieves a broader majority in the next elections.” It may be another obstacle to the forthcoming CAPV Spatial Planning Guidelines, which will change philosophy from the 2007 context. “It seems that there is now a tendency to protect the green rings around the urban centers,” explains Elortegi, “in times of crisis the soil has to be kept, the prolific times in which the municipalities supported themselves with building gains have been completed.”

In the opinion of Elortegi, the need for housing does not justify the attempt to build thousands of new homes in the Basque Country. Gorka by Tosu Betirako and Nagore agree. They remind us that Getxo has lost population in recent years: Between 83,000 and 78,000.

In search of another model of society

In the midst of this game, a group of people have been building a way of life in the Tosuko Campa over the years. Or at least that's what they're doing. The movement has always been present in the enclosure since 2011. In total, five encampments have been carried out in the northern part of France. The first three are of limited duration, organized to protest against urban planning. The latter two have been resistance camps, launched to deal with specific and, in principle, indefinite threats. The last of them took place at the end of January 2017, when the works had to start normally. For the time being, surveyors have been the only workers who have come to the appointment, according to the same sources. The task has been carried out with complete peace of mind, without any obstacles being placed by the members of Tosu Betirako. By the time machines go, they already have a prepared protocol.

Meanwhile, the hut, which initially had only four simple walls, has become a house where winter can pass, with kitchens and bunk beds, with adobe walls and cardboard, using recycled material. The orchards have also come the way. An association that works with people at risk of social exclusion approached them a couple of years ago and since then it has been one of the orchards for them. There is one person registered in Tosu's rural cottage and a passage of the law has been glued to the door, preventing a person from forcibly entering another's home when the police move. On one occasion they received the visit of the Municipal Police to verify that the registered person actually lived on the spot. But the atmosphere of the Tour is characterized by the influx of people. Talks, events, burger sales on Sundays in the afternoon… There is movement and they are also proud to have a good relationship with the neighbors in general.

“Now is the time to sit quietly and talk about the life we want to build here, to improve our relationships, to balance the levels of engagement, to have no power relations,” Nagore and Gorka explain, “sometimes we mystify the assembly but we have to work on relationships every day. After the last camp, companies have not moved and we want to take advantage of this moment of tranquility to make an internal reflection.”

“We are not here just to defend the land,” says Gorka, “we want to create another model of society, energy, food, relational… We have photovoltaic plates, all the material is reusable, at dinners we give purchased food to producers in the surroundings or from our garden. It’s not just a fight against parking.”

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