Location: Ateneu La Púa Carrer de la Unió, 33
Sessions: 5 (A dossier of texts will be provided)
Dates and times: Thursdays (except for the 5th and last session on Friday). January 19 and 26, and February 2, 9 and 17. 7-9 PM.
Coordination: LaFundició & La Hidra
Contact: hola@lafundicio.net | 654465108
Support registration: 20 euros
Scholarship registration: 100%
Limited places
Urban peripheries and the working class are back in fashion. The media blame them for the great “shocks” of the last year: from Brexit to the triumph of Donald Trump, passing through the growth of the “threat” Le Pen in France. Here we are no strangers to the upheavals: the Catalonia that one day was red, today goes from the orange of Ciudadanos to the purple of Podemos without blinking. But what realities are hidden beyond the vote? Although journalists, “experts” and politicians of different stripes speak of inequality and discomfort, indignation and rage, the truth is that almost no one bothers to listen to what the people of the neighborhoods say and do. In urban Catalonia, everything that goes beyond the center of Barcelona is practically invisible: it does not exist.
There is no greater symptom of that deafening silence than L’Hospitalet. How is it possible that so little is known about the second city of Catalonia? Almost nothing is known about what it lives on, what are the cultural traits of its inhabitants, their economic and political problems. It would seem that living under the shadow of Barcelona, which absorbs everything, practically serves as a pretext to avoid facing one’s own contradictions.
This course arises from the shared desire to put an end to such a curious law of silence. We start from a simple but resounding premise: the Catalan peripheries are the privileged terrain on which the economic and cultural model that regulates our lives has been based. All its contradictions are expressed in them, both the divine and the profane. Inequality takes shape in them, but also the possibility of turning it around. And few places are more suitable to look out on that reality than L’Hospitalet. After all, there is a common thread that unites the invisible cities of Baix Llobregat with their sisters of Besòs and Vallès, with their cousins of Vallecas and Móstoles, and with many other relatives beyond.
Throughout five sessions intertwined by luxury guests and organized groups, we will face a variety of crucial issues: what is the political economy that has been configured in the metropolitan territory and around what discourses; what relationship have the various generations of migrants had with the dominant society and what type of cultural hegemony has been structured; what role does the school play in the reproduction of inequalities; what challenges does organized society face in neighborhood movements and community initiatives. It is, therefore, about taking the pulse of the famous international of blocks. To refine the analysis collectively to be able to think, ultimately, about the “what to do”.
Date: Thursday, January 19 (7-9 PM)
Location: Ateneu La Púa
Hosted by:
Presentation:
L’Hospitalet and other similar places are often thought of as mere outskirts. As “bedroom communities” and little else. However, this type of easy reading often prevents us from asking fundamental questions: What is the productive model that is reconfiguring the territory? How does it influence how people earn a living? In this session we will address some of the transformations that have been taking place throughout the Metropolitan Region for decades. We will see that these changes have been marked by the transition from an industrial model (in long crisis since the 80s) to a service model strongly based on construction, logistics and real estate-financial strategies. A long cycle of change in which the precariousness of the world of work has been accompanied by the expansion of credit and an unprecedented residential revolution.
At the same time, we will ask ourselves: has work changed so much for those at the bottom? Although many factories closed, the 21st century brought with it its own assembly lines. A majority of the population (more than half) still depends on repetitive and mechanical jobs: in hotels and fast food restaurants, in Inditex franchises and logistics warehouses, teleoperator companies and hypermarkets. The proportion of those who work in these fields coincides with the percentage of people who do not continue their studies beyond compulsory education. On the other hand, production continues to rely on an immeasurable amount of reproductive, unpaid work, carried out by women. And it is also women who carry out, usually in irregular or precarious conditions, the care services that sustain life in the metropolis.
If the crisis has been particularly intense and lasting in the peripheries, it is precisely because of their position within this urban economy. However, and probably it should not surprise us, the current path of “recovery” is proposed more or less in the same terms: either through new urban operations based on real estate income and tourism (such as the transformation of the Gran Vía axis), with the construction of new logistics plants throughout the territory (see the case of Amazon) or even with new macro-events (see Barcelona World). How can we organize ourselves against an economic and political model that we thought was dead, but continues to function at full throttle?
Date: Thursday, January 26 (7-9 PM)
Location: Ateneu La Púa
Hosted by:
Presentation: Gramsci said that hegemony was not built through force but through cultural springs. The church, the school, the media. How have the metropolitan peripheries been governed culturally in the last 60 years? Talking about the peripheral neighborhoods is talking about the history of generations of emigrants who came from very different places, almost always stigmatized by the most established sectors as populations “without culture” or “moral”. In other words, as a first-order threat to the dominant culture. After all, what is hidden behind these discourses that are repeated throughout history, yesterday and today, is the fear of the so-called “dangerous classes”: the ghost of the uncivilized masses that will steal your well-being.
Not without reason: the metropolitan area and in particular the Baix Llobregat were in the 70s the cradle of one of the most powerful workers’ movements that are remembered. Years in which the stigma of illiterate immigrant was replaced by the honor of belonging to the working-class and neighborhood culture. However, that was an era plagued with contradictions, where we also witnessed the rise of a “middle class” ideology, structured around the family, private property and consumerism, which has been imposed over time. Such is the importance of this phenomenon that it can be said that the invisible neighborhoods and cities have played a central role in the construction of neoliberal hegemony in Catalonia. However, the crisis has meant for many a breakdown of that “middle class” horizon. In a time of growing inequality, it seems that we oscillate between two possible paths: Are we moving towards the formation of a new culture of “those at the bottom” against those at the top, as promoted by the PAH or the Mareas? Or are we heading towards an identity and ethno-nationalist closure?
Date: Thursday, February 2 (7-9 PM)
Location: Ateneu La Púa
Hosted by:
Presentation: In modern societies, the school is the place par excellence in which social structures are reproduced. As countless studies have shown, there is a close relationship between the social origin of students and their academic results: the possibilities of school success of a neighborhood boy are infinitely less than those of the children of the elites. Although the school system came to enjoy a certain prestige in recent decades, the truth is that the number of people from peripheral neighborhoods who access higher education is declining. And those who go through university do not access jobs according to their training. The question is unpostponable: what role does the school play today for the inhabitants of the neighborhoods? Do they believe in it as a way of social improvement? Is it true, as everything seems to indicate, that the educational institution suffers a strong crisis of legitimacy? In this session we will delve into the educational network to address two of its most serious problems. On the one hand, a wave of budget cuts that have weakened the public. On the other hand, the advance and naturalization of a dual system: one that concentrates inequalities in public schools (particularly to new minorities), and that makes the concerted or private school appear as a lifeline for those who believe that their children (mostly white) will thus have greater opportunities in life. Faced with the advance of inequality and segregation, it seems that one of the struggles for social justice passes through the school.
Date: Thursday, February 9 (7-9 PM)
Location: Ateneu La Púa
Hosted by:
Presentation: In recent years we have witnessed constant efforts by local administrations to build a city brand, from “L’H” to the “Smart city” and “Cultural District” projects. As has been happening in other places, this type of campaign is closely linked to the attraction of real estate investments: it is about turning the city into an attractive space for diverse companies, from hotels to fairgrounds, in a process very anchored to the urban rents generated by the city of Barcelona. The objective, after all, is to commodify living and neighborhood spaces to promote the circulation of capital.
But what degree of success do these programs have branding of the city? Does it revert positively to the neighbors? And going a little further, do the options of a peripheral city only pass through being hub real estate or backyard of the capital? In this session we will address what type of local economies are being generated and the symbolic struggles that are behind it, which have to do with building the story about L’Hospitalet past and future. Faced with the invisibility of the past, we will value diverse cultural traditions, such as agricultural heritage and anarchism. Faced with the brand city that certain agents try to promote, we will value practices that propose another type of cultural innovation. Popular initiatives that try to make the right to the city effective.
Date: Friday, February 17 (7-9 PM)
Location: Centre Municipal Ana Díaz Rico
Round Table led by: Montse Santolino
Presentation: The neighborhoods of Baix Llobregat and the Metropolitan Area were, in their day, the cradle of one of the most successful popular movements that are remembered. A network of associations, unions and entities capable of putting many administrations in check and conquering countless social rights. But it has been a long time since all those springs of collective solidarity are in the intensive care unit. Although in many neighborhoods associations with a lot of history still survive, the truth is that the triumph of the individualistic ideology of “middle class”, among other factors, has sharpened its crisis.
However, neighborhoods are still today a space for sociability and political articulation closely linked to their particular reality. What types of cultural expression are emerging and what relationship do they have with the territory itself? On the one hand, we will talk about the “neighborhood culture” or the “sense of belonging”, which still operates today in the neighborhoods with greater force than it does in an urban center such as Barcelona. On the other hand, we will pay attention to the incipient forms of neighborhood organization, which do not necessarily involve “producing neighborhood” and which have other references, from the right to housing (the PAH and other movements) to that of religious faith (from evangelist to Catholic communities) through music and certain lifestyles (such as youth cultures around reggaeton, hip hop or trap). It will not be so much about making an inventory as about thinking about what types of associationism the various groups promote and what we can do to join efforts and organize ourselves collectively, beyond the differences.