Several dozen people, who participated in the demonstration in protest against the housing situation This Saturday afternoon in Valencia, they camped in front of the city’s Town Hall to continue their request for decent housing.
The protagonists of the camp spent the night on the esplanade of the Town Hall Square, where they have set up about twenty tents in the shape of a circle. Next to the stores, they have placed the posters they showed at the demonstration, some of them with the motto of this Saturday’s protest: Valencia s’ofega (‘Valencia drowns’).
As some of the people camping have explained, they decided to occupy the square during the demonstration and after different calls and proposals that circulated on social networks. The campers have called – also online – an “open assembly” for six o’clock this afternoon, until which time, at least for the moment, they will maintain the “occupation” of the square.
Until this hour, they ask “people to support the occupation for the whole day” and “food prepared to share”, as well as have announced a series of activities and the creation of banners.
The competence to intervene, in the event that there is some type of disorder, would be the local police, which may require the presence of the national police.
The demonstration
Several thousand protesters – about 15,000 according to the Government Delegation and 50,000 according to the organization – toured the center of Valencia yesterday afternoon to demand the right to housing and against the touristification of the city under the slogan Valencia s’ofegawhich commemorates the flood that flooded the city on October 14, 1957. The organizers claimed the regulation of rental pricesthe stoppage of evictions, the creation of a Public Housing stock or the stoppage of residential sales to foreign capital.
In reference to the excess of tourists, they asked that Valencia be declared a stressed area, that tourist apartments be prohibited and that the hotel business be “strictly” regulated, as well as a decrease in the city, which they consider saturated. They also defended that “we must stop betting on tourism as an economic engine, put an end to the promotion of the city as a tourist destination and stop the entry of cruise ships and the expansion of the port and airport.”
