Rural Catalonia supports the unrest over the housing crisis in Barcelona: “Do we want empty towns or living towns?” | News from Catalonia

Actions against the touristification of mountain regions are gaining momentum in Catalonia. The anonymous collective Els Trinxats, born in Cerdanya, has been granted the cancellation of the Occident Winterfesta macro musical event scheduled for the Purísima bridge. Not even three days after the massive demonstration for the right to housing that flooded the Catalan capital, entities from the Pyrenees have organized a symbolic event in the Plaza de Sant Jaume in Barcelona to demand a change of course in the territorial model. “The demonstration on November 23 took place in Barcelona, ​​but it was a country act. “Young people from mountain territories go to study in big cities and then cannot return to their villages,” denounced Enric Aragonès, spokesperson for the Sindicat de Llogateres de Catalunya.

The December 6 bridge is historically considered the beginning of the ski season in the Catalan Pyrenees. This year the organization of the first edition of the Winter festivalthe winter version of Summerfestheld in Puigcerdà, the largest municipality in Cerdanya. During the year, groups such as Els Trinxats or Arran have threatened to boycott the festival because “it consolidates the tourist monoculture model.”

The festival’s organizing company has issued a statement in which they have argued that they are canceling the event due to external circumstances that have affected planning, but have not made any reference to a possible boycott. After the cancellation, the organization has assured that Winterfest will be held on the same dates next year, December 6 and 7.

One of the pillars of the massive demonstration in Barcelona last Saturday was the call from the Llogateres Union for a strike over rent payments. Aragonès, its spokesperson, has not specified whether this widespread non-payment will materialize, but has assured that the organization is working on it. “We are moving towards a strike. We have a plan that we will make public as events progress,” he said in reference to the fulfillment of the requests of the organizers.

Arnau Corberó, a member of Pirineu Viu, has not specified the actions that will be carried out in the Seu d’Urgell demonstration either. Corberó has limited himself to justifying that it has been convened in the capital of Alt Urgell because it is the largest city in the Pyrenees and because it is a municipality on the border with Andorra, where the settlement of investment funds has caused a notable increase in rental prices.

The transversality of the citizen movement for the right to housing has been especially accentuated in the mountain regions. The fight against climate change is increasingly worrying the groups in the area. Eva Vilaseca, spokesperson for the Catalan Assembly for Ecosocial Transition, has added water consumption to the bases of the December 6 call. “The increase in temperature shows that most ski resorts will be unviable without artificial snow cannons. This represents energy and water consumption that we cannot afford in a context of severe drought,” he stressed.

The 2022 ski season pitted environmental entities in the area and businessmen in the sector over the production of artificial snow. While the organizations saw that it was “obscene” to produce it in a context of water emergency, the sector defended itself under the premise that the stations have their own storage system, and therefore, do not consume water from the supply network, as argued Joaquim Alsina, president of the Catalan Association of Stations of Muntanya.