Squating Barcelona and Grenada

 

 

So the plan is to get to Ibiza and tend bar for a few months during the tourist season, saving enough money to get to some tropical place like Cambodia or Vietnam. In the mean time, I really needed to sleep long and hard and not get asked to many questions and avoid loud, beer drinking, touristic type...s. The answer seemed pretty obvious, there are a number of squats in Barcelona where i could do a little free construction work in exchange for a mattress on the ground and some heavily cooked food that had been liberated from the local refuse bin.

My traveling friend, Mike, was skeptical, to say the least, as he had live in close proximity to a squat in Copenhagen and his car had been burned durning one of their demonstrations. Eventually we agreed that they were similar to ignorant children but could tolerate the enviroment for a week or so.

Squating is basiclly taking an unoccupied building by force and then making it livable while having much trouble with legal proceedings. La Rimaia sat on a prime block near the center of tourism and admists electronic stores, chocolate boutiques, specility liquor shops and the University. Tje bottom and first floors had, at one point, housed a print shop as evidenced by jugs of aging ink and loose type sets. The large spaces of both has been cleard for social space and a meter high stage had been raised of rubble to complement a bar of the same dimesions. Drinks and food were sold when goods had been liberated from dumpsters. The latter was especially noxious.

Off the stairs, between the 1st and 2nd floors, directly below the elevator and above the water main access, was a conveinetly placed, maintenance shop that now housed floor to ceiling brick rubble. The kitchen, soon-to-be-dead laundry machine, bathroom(singular), dinning room, and first come housing were on the second. The third and fourth were a series of junk piles and beds. There was space on both, but we took to the East wing of the 5th floor because it had a door and reasoned that these lazy, mulleted, malnutritioned give me kids wouldnt be bothered to climb higher than necessary. Even if the stairs were laid with white rose marble.

The wing were mirrors of each other with a large room to the street followed by entry way, kitchen, dinning room, bathroom, and two smaller bedrooms with a common enclosed balcony that faced a covered car lot. Almost every interior wall had beeen demolished and it was a mixture of water, glass, hanging eletrical, and those clay cinder blocks common to hot climite construction. Two lights on the floor worked. The front has a mystery water leak and the electrical vines produced current when switch box was kicked just right.

We took the south facing room to shovel out for our burrow. In one corner salvagable salvage were stacked. The floor was swept and some found mattressed were leaned over our luggage. With the floor clean I took the lightest sweepings and covered the floor surrounding our gear with a light rouge that stood out against the white tile.

"is that to see if any one gets to our stuff?" asked Mike

"Yeah"

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Awoke at 2045 after a nap. Hungry.

Life sounds downstairs and feeet shift in the kitchen.

1) Raid dumpster

2) Cut celery to chunks and place in large bin for 3 days in the sun. Leave other vegs in common area to extrude oily decomposition juice.

3) Boil rotted veg. Artichock is normally a very tough plant. But if you allow it rot for a week, then it will be come soft enough be boiled to a maluable consistancy.

4) Mash boiled rotten veg with celery aka. Shreck's toe nail clippings. Allow to set.

5) Make breast sized pie.

6) Fry in excessively large pan so the oil barely reaches cooking temperature.

7) Serve with some parellely derived junk.

Rubber oil pucks.

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Going out is the easy part, getting back into the building is the trouble. The front door only opens from the inside and sometimes it is hard to get someone to help. Or if not, climb the electrical conduit coming subterrianly to a balcony and slip inside.

Floors 6, 7, & 8 are a mixture of sealed and cohearsed rooms. All unoccupied. Same condition as the beforementioned. 

The modicum of work has been applied to the ninth, last, and most beautiful floor. One large master bedroom facing north to the hills cupping the valley of Barcelona, guest bedroom with bathroom, large kitchen with bar, spacious dining and sitting room opening to an appartment sized terrace with stairs leading to a second terrace.

La Rimaia is the tallest builing on the block. The view? Glorious.