They call themselves “Okupar Abril” and it was in April, on the 25th, that the movement decided to set up shop in a vacant building, already partially boarded up, in “protest against real estate speculation”.
The building, owned by IPSS (Private Social Solidarity Institution) Fundação D. Pedro VI, is located on Rua Bartolomeu da Costa, in the parish of Santa Engrácia, in Lisbon.
This Thursday morning the occupants were “surprised” by the police, who expelled them “illegally”, they say. To Expresso, this movement sought to justify the occupation and the illegality of the eviction.
“This building has been abandoned for 15 years. Before it was a daycare center, then a nursing home and, finally, a kind of center for children with Down syndrome. We wanted to continue the social work that the foundation [D. Pedro IV] left it here”, they guarantee.
And they also guarantee that the building, despite having been closed more than a decade ago, was “structurally quite well”, having only had to do “cleaning of rubble, removing some dead animals and other simple painting rehabilitation”.
As soon as they did, they named the new space “Centro Social Cultural de Santa Engrácia” and began work.
“In the first few days, residents’ assemblies were held, where the social and community work to be developed was planned. Hundreds of neighbors got involved. Today, mainly from donations and volunteer work, we have canteens here to serve meals, a functional kitchen and a cafeteria, there are activities with children and elderly people, there are conversations and discussions of a cultural scope”, they explain.
Regarding the police action this Thursday, they guarantee that it was “inappropriate”. “The police immediately started closing the doors. They had no eviction warrant and yet they refused to speak to our lawyers. And they threatened us: ‘Do you want to come down or not? If they don’t go down well, they go down badly!’”, they denounce.
In the hours following the eviction, a few dozen people gathered at number 2 on Rua Bartolomeu da Costa, in protest.
“How will it be resolved? We do not know. What experience tells us is that resolution depends from situation to situation. But there has to be a precautionary measure — and there was none. We prepared