Financialization, Dispossession and Collective Struggles in Barcelona. Reflections from Feminist Urbanism.

Barcelona is a city of great contrasts. In recent years it has become the scene of major international events such as the America's Cup or the Mobil congress; it has become one of the European cities with the highest number of visitors (9.7 million tourists in 2022); and it prides itself on having carried out innovative urban projects such as the superblocks or the green axes. However, the everyday life of an important part of the city's neighbors has worsened in recent years with exorbitant housing prices that force many people to leave their neighborhoods; an extreme commodification of public space; and hygienist and social control policies that pursue practices of use of public space and stigmatize neighborhoods and collectives. This reality has generated a great rejection on the part of different social, neighborhood, environmental and feminist movements that organize themselves to respond to the different problems.

This paper analyzes the major problems of the city from an ecofeminist perspective, the response by grassroots groups and some proposals made by Col-lectiu Punt 6, as a collective of feminist urbanists who seek to have a socially and territorially fairer city.