PAIN the neighborhood movement The characteristics of the process of capitalist industrialization under the Francoist dictatorship, especially since the crisis of the policy of "autarky, "engendered, throughout the 1960s and into the 1970s, a growing concentration of the working-class population in the "periphery" of the major urban centers. (Madrid, Barcelona, and Biscay include 26 percent of the total population of the country.) They also created chaos, a consequence of the forms taken by this industrialization and of the capitalists' hunt for maximum profits. Thus, while on the one hand the development of production and the division of labor were creating new needs for the reproduction of labor-power, on the other hand new requirements of capital accumulation were also stimulated, and this gave rise to an intensive utilization of the cities by the bourgeoisie. Under the Francoist dictatorship, especially because of the links of this dictatorship with speculative real-estate capital, the contradiction between the new needs of the working population (health, housing, education, transport, etc.) and the interests of capital garbed in the cloak of the dictatorship (land speculation, orientation of investments toward the most profitable sectors, which meant the sectors with the lowest costs, lending of priority to private services as opposed to public ones, etc.) has become openly manifest during the past several years. This contradiction has been accompanied by significant tensions among various factions of capital itself, in accordance with the particular interests of these factions and the dictatorship's excessive support to one of them. Three factors have contributed to raising the specific problems of the neighborhoods to a position of prime importance: First, the plans for the "ordering" of territory in the direct service of private interests (highway construction, buildings), which have tended to destroy the environment as well as cultural and historic 20
3 34 10 acquisitions. Second, the constant degradation of living conditions in the popular neighborhoods, a consequence of the anarchic character of the process of industrialization, of the massive shift of people of rural origin to the cities; this took the form of the absence of basic social services (even infrastructural ones like electricity, gas, and water) and the proximity of the neighborhoods to dirty or dangerous industries (pollution, atomic power plants, etc.). Third, the constant increase in the level of needs and aspirations of the working population (housing, health, schools, cultural and sports centers). The interests of the ruling class in its "ordering" of the city and the country appear clearly in the combination of these three factors. For capitalism, it is a matter of seeking to reduce the costs of the reproduction of labor-power to the lowest possible level and of endowing itself with instruments of ideological control over the population. The antagonism between these interests and the satisfaction of the rising needs of the working population appears even more sharply in the context of a more general crisis of capitalism. Thus, the factors mentioned above have had their impact on a given political situation: crisis of the dictatorship, rise of the workers movement, radicalization of specific sectors of the population (youth, unemployed, women, nationalist currents, various cultural activities, etc.). The mass movements that are developing in the neighborhoods and the legal, paralegal, and illegal structures that are now arising are the product of the convergence of this series of factors. These movements are now entering a directly political phase. They are supporting the struggles of the workers and other sectors (like teachers), massively taking up the struggle against repression, and, above all, increasingly denouncing the present municipal councils as institutions controlled by the dictatorship and the capitalists. These
are the most outstanding features of the neighborhood movements. If to this we add the dictaforship's narrow margin for economic "concessions" as a means of partially resolving the most urgent problems of the population (this is a result of the economic situation), then the full gravity of the social crisis of Spanish capitalism appears. From the protest against pollution by the people of Erandio in 1969 to the present politicization of the Asociaciones de Vecinos (tenant associations) in Madrid and Barcelona, broad sectors of the masses have travelled a long road. There have been mobilizations for adequate inexpensive housing (which have occurred in the "marginal" neighborhoods —chabolas- as well as in those that depend on the state housing authority). There have been mobilizations for adequate transport (especially in areas like Santo Coloma in Barcelona), against pollution (mobilizations against atomic power plants in Biscay or against the construction of cellulose factories in Orense), against the high cost of living, (solidarity between housewives and shopkeepers in Madrid against middlemen, convergence of demands with those of the working class, like "Down with prices, up with wages!"). There have been mobilizations for adequate and free child-care centers and schools (the raising of this theme during the struggle of the teachers is the best example, for medical centers and free, preventive medical care (accidents and scandals around the social security system have provoked massive protests), against the lack of the most elementary infrastructure (lighting, water, traffic lights), for parks, and against partial and regional plans that benefit the speculators, destroy cultural facilities, eliminate zones slated for public services, and destroy the environment and the countryside (the Mediterranean Highway, for example; now there is a plan to build a road through the coastal zone near Coto de Doñana de Huelva). All these struggles have interlaced with the struggles of youth (for the establishment of cultural and sports centers at state expense, for the institution of permanent polyvalent professional training, against unemployment), women (for adequate social services, centers for sexual information and education, free contraception on demand), the unemployed (for odequate unemployment insurance, sliding scale of hours, public works projects), retirees (against low pensions and for the establishment of adequate recreation centers). These struggles have also linked up with direct struggles against repression (the amnesty campaign) and with the fight against national oppression (for self-determination and autonomy status, for the spread of national or "regional" languages and cultures). In addition, teachers, technicians, and other "middle strata in process of proletarianization" have joined these struggles (contributing their specialized "know-how" to the denunciation of the official "urban policy"). The neighborhood mobilizations have also converged with directly political activities (creation of rank-and-file bodies against the interclass blocs, open debate around the alternatives upheld by various political currents) and are coming to define alternatives counterposed to those of the present municipal councils (the campaign for "democratic" municipal councils). The structure of this movement varies greatly according to whether we are dealing with a "middle-class" neighborhood, a popular neighborhood, or a "marginal" one (that is, a lumpen one). The structure also depends on whether it is a mainly "residential" community or is directly linked to the factories in the area. The most general features are as follows:
*In the most combative areas there is a combination of various structures, some directly representative of the movement (tenants assemblies and elected committees), others conducting permanent legal and paralegal activity (tenant associations with commissions within them, youth clubs, etc.), as well as bodies that include the most radical layers of the vanguard ("far-lefi" neighborhood committees).
*In general, however, except in moments of struggle or in places in which reformist influence and control are weak, the major organizational network of the movement is provided by the tenant associations, and it is within the commissions of these associations that the "class-struggle" current is developing its work.
*In the present political situation, we are beginning to see a relative upturn in "democratic assemblies" and similar bodies, as well as a tendency for the tenant associations to take positions on the local coordinating bodies that support the interclass fronts in the country. The constitution of these "democratic assemblies" can take various forms, from bureaucratic installation to "mass" discussion stimulated by centrist groups that aim at transforming these assemblies into points of support for their tactic of outflanking reformism.
*In backward neighborhoods, or in those in which there is not much mass activity, there is nevertheless a division between reformists (who are dedicated to preparing the emergence of legal bodies) and revolutionaries (who in general hold up the neighborhood commissions as alternatives, sometimes in a sectarian manner).
*In cities in which the mass movement is less advanced but in which the for left holds a strong position the situation can vary and the neighborhood commissions can play a more central role, provided they do not counterpose themselves to the utilization of legal possibili-
*Likewise, combined with the organization of specific sectors around the neighborhood commissions (women, youth, unemployed, teachers, etc.), there are inter-neighborhood commissions that permit a relatively independent dynamic of development and radicalization. Whatever the form, the diversity of the existing bodies expresses a growing coordination of distinct sectors at the neighborhood level and a consciousness of the need to go beyond this; in other words, the need to aim at a "citywide" centralization (both vertically and horizontally) and at an alliance with the working class.C
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