Iruña, Basque Country: resistance against eviction

translation | 22.08.2004 13:07 | Free Spaces | Repression | World

For days the old inner city centre of the Basque city Iruna seems like a police fortress.
After heavily armed police forces have evicted the 10 year old occupied autonomously organised youth and community centre "Euskal Jai" (means something like "Basque party") last monday, the massive resistance against the attacks on the self-organised structures does not stop.

The center consisted of a Gaztetxe ("youth centre") and a square, a former "Frontón" (a place on which in past times Pelota, a sort of “Squash” in larger size, was played).
Just on the eviction day, Euskal Jai had invited to a large neighbourhood assembly, at which the keys of the square should be handed over to the neighbourhood initiatives interested in discussion the further use of the square.
According to the opinion of Euskal Jai activists the “fascist” city council fears that the "Virus of selforganisation" could spread in the city.

Many neighbours had already assembled on the street at the beginning of the eviction and protested loudly banging on pots against the police operation.
The police units thereby operated extremely brutally and indiscriminate against the people in the old town quarter.
For example the demolotion of the Gaztetxes started, although several persons were still on the roof of the house.
Police force shotrepeatedly with rubber bullets at these people and threw stones at them, whereby the back of one of the teenagers, who were present on the roof, was hurt.

After on Tuesday the last people have got off the roof, there were again and again attempts of smaller groups to climb again on the roof, in one case successfully for some time.

Since monday the tension rises in the old town quarter. Each day there are demonstrations of up to 2000 people, rallies, road blockades and barricades, burning rubbish containers, and more and more people arrive from the different parts of the Basque country and the Spain to Iruna to state their solidarity with Euskal Jai.
For this evening a large demo against the eviction has been called.
The city council arranged because of alleged fear of further escalation to remove all garbage containers from the old town quarter.
Reaction of the residents of the quarter:
For this afternoon already a large garbage action has been called for:
Because of the lack of existing garbage containers the residents want to take their rubbish in a collective action to the city hall and dispose of it there.

VIDEOS (partly huge file size):

With fun against police terrorism: