The Palma encampment responds to City Hall: "If sexist attitudes were grounds for eviction from a space, they would have to evict the City Council"

PalmaThe Flama collective and the people from the Palma Housing Camp have flatly rejected that the Palma City Council uses the cases of sexism reported within the space to politically justify the eviction of the Plaça d'Espanya. In a statement released this Tuesday, they accuse the mayor, Jaime Martínez, of "instrumentalizing feminism to attack and delegitimize a social movement" that demands the right to decent housing.

The response comes after Cort referred to the situations of sexism reported at the camp to defend the need to act on the space. Flama and the camped people maintain, however, that the City Council had already demanded the eviction before having knowledge of these events and consider that it is now using them to reinforce "a political decision it had already made."

"We will not allow feminism to be instrumentalized to attack and delegitimize a social movement for the right to decent housing," they point out. The collective wants to differentiate between reporting sexist behavior and the continuity of the camp. "Reporting sexist behavior is not reporting the existence of the camp," they remark. In this sense, they argue that pointing out specific problems within a collective space "is not asking for its dissolution."

"We will not hide the problems"

The camped people claim that they have addressed the reported situations and that they have adopted measures to ensure safety within the space.

"We will not hide the problems: we confront them," they assert. According to their explanation, they have listened to the affected people, have taken measures, and have removed from the space "people who were generating insecurity." They also claim to have set in motion mechanisms for "prevention, care, and reparation." In the statement, they even question the argument of the City Council and suggest, in an ironic tone, that if the existence of sexist behaviors were enough to evict an entire space, "perhaps the mayor and his partners should consider evicting the City Hall.

Criticisms of the City Council's response

Flama and the Housing Encampment also reproach the city council for the response that, they claim, it has given to their demands.

"Instead of approaching to listen to the demands of the population calling for solutions and measures in the face of the housing emergency, their response has been to turn their backs on us and repeatedly demand the eviction of the encampment," they denounce. For this reason, they demand that Martínez "stop instrumentalizing feminism to justify his political agenda" and that he begin to listen to the demands of the people camping. "Housing is a right. The encampment continues," they conclude.

Cort had already requested the eviction

The controversy adds to the conflict that the Palma City Council and the people camping in Plaça d'Espanya have been maintaining for days. Cort had requested that the Government Delegation take action to put an end to the encampment, while sources from the Delegation had pointed out that they had not received any formal eviction request.

The Delegation had defended that the encampment was protected by the right of assembly, that it had a transitory character, and that, at that moment, it was not disturbing public order or basic services. The Government delegate, Alfonso Rodríguez, had also stated that the National Police would not evict the encampment and had described it as a "shame" that the city council was more concerned about the people camping in Plaça d'Espanya than about the hundreds of evictions that take place in the Balearic Islands.