16 years ago they occupied Astika Herria. The self-managed neighborhood consists of three villages, communal gardens and an industrial building. Labartain S.L. The company has acquired the entire plot to build a large leisure infrastructure, which has posed a threat of eviction from Astika.

Astika started as a housing project in May 2004, with the occupation of the first hamlet in Vitoria-Gasteiz. Around the years 2009-2010, the project was expanded: one more group of people rented a second house and conditioned the abandoned industrial building to use it as a common space for the neighbors and as an open space to the exterior.

The occupation of the ship represented a qualitative leap for Astika, which began to socialize the project and open it to the people. Since then, Astika has become more than a housing complex and has become a space for community experimentation. "It is a place of encounter and socialization, of collective experimentation, of learning and of growth. Both those of us who live there and those of us who do not live have built a shared identity. We have built a common being, a way to collectively confront the world," said the neighbors. The industrial building has become a point of reference, a meeting point between neighbors and visitors to the project, where workshops, concerts, theatrical performances or popular parties such as the festivities of the Astika neighborhood or the "magical" nights of solstice are organized.

Thanks to the adaptation of the ship, Astika became a space shared by different groups and political projects, as in the case of Komantxe Konpartsa. The ship is usually used by the Comparsa de Movimiento de Occupy y Autogestión de Bilbao, both as a warehouse, as a work space and meetings.

In 2014, a third dwelling, abandoned and destroyed, was also rebuilt and adapted. Thanks to auzolan and collaboration, in a few years Astika has become a space for experimentation based on community relations, self-management and mutual support.

Speculative interests and risk of collapse

In 2007, Labartain acquired some of the land in the Astika neighborhood for the construction of a macro-project that is not yet public. In 2016, it was possible to change the classification of the land into industrial land, which opened the doors to the macro-project. In January 2019, with the approval of the Partial Plan, the City of Erandio gave way to the Labartain project.

Once the project was secured, the company contacted the owner of Astika's last hamlet to buy it. He put the owners on the table two options: to sell the farmhouse or to become a partner of the macro-project and the investment capital. In June 2020, the last Astika plots were sold to the company Labartain. The company then built up one of the homes, leaving five homeless people, who were evicted. There is no longer any law preventing the speculative project. The only obstacle is the material: the neighborhood remains the space of life and coexistence of the community.

However, it seems that this is not a problem for either the company or the municipal government of the PNV: In early July 2020, residents of the neighborhood learned that there was an order to knock down one of the villages and the industrial building. The City Hall says that the neighborhood is empty, that nobody lives there. The neighbors have put in many resources, which have served to demonstrate that there are people in the neighborhood who live and are in precarious conditions. However, in December 2020, the company Labartain has ratified its license to demolish farmhouses. Therefore, from that moment on they can perform the demolition at any time: “The City Hall and the Erandio Court are still standing: They say that there is no one in Astika Herria. Once again, the Administrative Litigation Court No. 5 of Bilbao ruled against all the logics that the demolition of a building does not violate the inviolability of the housing, even though the neighbors are inside their houses”, the neighbors have denounced.

A conflict that goes beyond Astika

In summer, before the movements of the company and the City Hall, Astika’s neighbours decided it was time to mobilize. The first step was a concentration before the City Hall of Erandio: in the mobilization on 17 July hundreds of people showed their solidarity with the project.

Last December, in the face of the order of demolition, a new massive mobilisation was called in the area. On January 11, before the City Hall of Erandio, under the slogan "Herrisistentzia is the only way" and "Defend Astika", hundreds of people denounced the "speculative interests" of the company and the "prevarication" and "abuses" of the City Hall and the PNV. “Labartain S.L. It wants to demolish Astika Herria, with the unconditional help of the PNV. In the face of life, they continue to prioritize cement and hunger for money,” said the neighbors.

Astika’s neighbours stress that what is at stake is not only the struggle for housing, but a more general conflict between two antagonistic logics: "Logic of capital" vs. "community lifestyles". "At the heart of the Astika conflict there is a clash between two opposing positions, a clash between capital and life," they say.

The neighbours claim Astika as a historical heritage: "The first sources that speak of Astika's dwellings are from the 16th century", so "they constitute a living history of our people". With this macro-project, "speculative interests want to bury memory and history under a thousand tons of cement." "This collapse makes it clear to us that the only memory that matters to the PNV is that in museums. To put it another way: a marketable memory in the market of capitalism. The rest is buried and erased," said Astika's neighbors.

Regarding the dialectic between the local and the global, the neighbors claim that Astika is another front of a struggle that is taking place throughout the Basque Country: "On one side are the economic interests of the few: Those who destroy our mountains to make the TAV, those who evict gaztetxes to speculate with construction. We are those who resist the other side, those who continue to fight for a more supportive world. The struggles that sabotage big infrastructure or the struggles that assault private property and speculation through occupation are also part of our struggle."

The Astika neighbours have made a positive assessment of the mobilisations that have taken place since the risk of collapse in the summer. The work carried out in recent months has been valued as a qualitative leap: Astika "has gone from being a shared space by different collectives to becoming a political subject", as demonstrated by the self-defense and collaboration networks that are being built in the valley (along with other villages and self-managed projects of Erandio) and the joint work with the youth and gaztetxe assemblies of Bizkaia. "Through conflict, we have broadened and radicalized our concept of community. Today Astika is a community in resistance that grows as the struggle spreads.”

Neighbours are confident that: “The struggle has only just begun.” Therefore, they call on "the whole of the Basque Country machinada", inviting her to go through Astika, to know the project and to join the mobilizations that will be carried out.