An encampment over housing in Madrid's Puerta del Sol, together with similar camps in other capitals, has set off a political earthquake and turned the spotlight on housing and on the kind of city people want, according to the newspaper El País. The Puerta del Sol camp was held on Sunday 27 September.
"Madrid / belongs to us / to you and to me" — a verse by the punk band Biznaga, which El País describes as one of the choruses most sung with arms raised by the crowd at the Puerta del Sol camp.
Social movements quoted by El País argue that cities are turning into a mixture of shopping centre and tourist resort. In that context, the paper writes, the French sociologist Henri Lefebvre's idea of the "right to the city" gains meaning: the city belongs to the people who live in it.
El País frames the mobilisation around a single question about the direction urban life is taking, as residents of Madrid and other capitals push housing and the use of city space to the centre of the political debate.
