The Right to the City and the Right to the State: Neighbourhood Associations and the Negotiation of Citizenship

This chapter analyses the role played by squatters’ associations in shaping notions of entitlement and citizenship in Spain: from the final years of the Franco dictatorship and through the period of democratic transition and consolidation. Specifically, the chapter focuses on the case of Orcasitas—one of the largest shantytowns that formed on the outskirts of the city of Madrid in the mid-1950s. The patterns of squatting and of community life in Orcasitas were representative of hundreds of other shantytowns all over Spain. The chapter shows that as the struggle for urban renovation merged into a process of political transition, local experiences of self-management and grass-roots activism interacted with an evolving discourse on democratic citizenship and with other forms of collective mobilization.