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| Plataforma de Afectados por la Hipoteca |
In February 2009, after the Spanish government had shown itself incapable of enforcing Article 47 of the Spanish Constitution — declaring that “all Spaniards have the right to enjoy decent and adequate housing” — a citizens’ assembly was held in Barcelona to establish the Platform for People Affected by Mortgages, or the PAH (Spanish: Plataforma de Afectados por la Hipoteca, https://afectadosporlahipoteca.com/) .
This grassroots organization takes direct action to combat the foreclosures which were evicting people from their homes at an alarming rate following the 2008 financial crash that bursted the speculative housing bubble in Spain. The PAH had successfully stopped more than 2,000 evictions by 2016. By 2017 the PAH had 220 local branches across Spain.
The PAH is organised horizontally by assembly. Weekly meetings are offered to newcomers (Welcoming Assembly) and smaller sessions are organized for those in need of emotional support. The weekly Actions and Coordinating Assembly discusses the host of actions the movement has in gestation and decides on the day-to-day responsibilities of the attendees. Everyone present is asked to contribute to one small but essential part of the PAH —to help out with cleaning, to update the calendar, to record minutes, to keep track of time, for instance — and all are rotated every week.
The PAH’s Obra Social (Social Work) is the body which — when the bank is not prepared to find alternative housing for the tenant — will help the evicted family occupy one of the thousands of empty apartments owned by the banks. But to say that the banks actually ‘own’ these empty flats is, as one PAH organizer put it, entirely misleading, for it was the Spanish people who bailed out these banks during the crisis, and it is therefore the Spanish people who own these properties.