# Went to spain again. Here's what happened



## almostvicious (Apr 1, 2019)

Hello ladies and gentlemen, and everyone in between

Three weeks ago I was bored, so i decided to take my butt to Spain (again) to meet up with my husband that was on his way back from the Canary Islands. Getting there was easy as fuck. Got on a fast train, lied to the employee saying I didn't have any fucking money and absolutely needed to reach barcelona for work reasons, and he let me stay on but asked me to give an (fake) address so the company would send me a fine (lol nice try) 
Seven hours later I was in Barcelona and caught another train to reach the city of VIlanova.

There I had friends who were waiting for me in their castle-squat. Had a pretty mellow evening, and the next morning-afternoon we all had beers on their rooftop terrace. 








With time, i've come to the conclusion that all Spanish squats are a time capsule. The days and nights look the same. Sunlight, good conversations, friends, and A LOT of terribly awesome-but-still-lame eurodance trash music. How Much Is The Fish by Scooter is stuck in my brain ever since. 
The first few days were spent between going to the beach and hanging out on the roof. On Wednesday, me my husband and a couple of friends all took a train to Barcelona to visit other friends in their squats. The fun thing about the squats in that city is that most of them used to be industrial buildings and factories so the space in which you're allowed to have fun is endless. To summarise: the first week was a lot of back and forth between the castle squat and the industrial squats. 
I normally don't really take chemical drugs that much, but my experience with Barcelona is that any living room you walk in, for some reason there's always a mirror covered in lines of ecstasy. Pinks, blues, oranges, greens... Endless nights that end up with people laughing and talking shit on the roof, and trips to the corner store to buy beer at 10 in the morning. 
The weekend of the second week, the castle squat had organised a tattoo workshop. in one room, artists brought their own needles and machines and offered to tattoo people for the equivalent of the price of a beer. In the second room, dismembered tattoo machines and boxes of cables and screws were scattered all over a table, and with the advice of a few experts, you could build your own machine from scratch. In the third room, the house had installed a bunch of couches and tables for people to hang out, and one of the guys of the house was celebrating his birthday. It wasn't long until it was 10 am, everyone was high on ecstacy participating in a ping pong tournament on a table built with 3 boards and 4 chairs. Meanwhile, me, Ash, and Martin that I met that night went on a trip to aldi to get beers and cheap champagne. Ash was the highest of us all because he was using his mediocre spanish-with-an-australian-accent skills to talk to literally everyone we met on the street. The cashier in aldi was mortified because he kept rambling about discounts on microwaves and neither her or us could get him to shut up x)





_Ash makes questionable art when he's high.._​On the way back from the store we decided to take a break and sit on a bench (yes a 5 minute walk is a long way at 10am lol especially when the squat is 100 meters away from that bench) Half an hour later I was rolling around on the floor in the sun when I had an epiphany: "LETS TAKE EVERYONE FROM THE HOUSE TO THE BEACH!"
And so we went, and listened to britney spears with our feet in the sea. 

Two days later it was time to head back home. So, me and my husband caught a train towards France. It was our lucky day because we didn't get kicked out a single time. A friend of mine had invited us to her squat in the south of France so 3 hours later we were in Argeles Sur Mer looking for her house. didn't take too long to find it, and I was pretty happy. I love the vibe of newly opened squats because everyone is super motivated to fix old things and install new ones. 






_Kitchen of Las Gatas squat in Argeles Sur Mer_​it was march 19th when we arrived, so two days later, after going recycling from supermarket dumpsters and taking a walk through the vineyards with the dogs, we had a spring solstice party. Apparently i've reached the age where I build altars and drink wine with my friends. One girl from the house also had tarot cards so we read the instruction manual and did a few readings for fun. According to my cards some wealthy blond businessman is going to mess up my love life soon hahah. 






_our sexy living room table for Spring Solstice_
​The next morning we caught a train to Lyon and had to spend the night there because there were no more trains going to my city. That's the exact moment I knew I was gonna miss Southern Europe spring temperatures, and I was so right. We woke up in our tent in the morning, and the top of my backpack and sleeping bag had a layer of ice. Ew. I hate the cold. 

But here's to an ever growing collection of friends and adventures... For now I'm back home and have to deal with an invasion of mice in my bedroom  woohoo


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## japanarchist (Apr 2, 2019)

That's so fucking cool! Reading stories like this really makes my day. I'm planning on coming to Spain soon, how common is it to find people who understand English amongst the radical squatta crowd there? I'm studying spanish now but I can barely string a sentence together::sour:: .


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## almostvicious (Apr 2, 2019)

japanarchist said:


> That's so fucking cool! Reading stories like this really makes my day. I'm planning on coming to Spain soon, how common is it to find people who understand English amongst the radical squatta crowd there? I'm studying spanish now but I can barely string a sentence together::sour:: .



To be honest most squats don't even have a single spanish person living in them. I've met a bunch of spanish speakers but they were from Peru haha you should be safe speaking only english because the squatter crowd is constitued of a lot of germans and eastern european people  Other than that feel free to send me a private message if you want some infos


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## japanarchist (Apr 3, 2019)

almostvicious said:


> To be honest most squats don't even have a single spanish person living in them. I've met a bunch of spanish speakers but they were from Peru haha you should be safe speaking only english because the squatter crowd is constitued of a lot of germans and eastern european people  Other than that feel free to send me a private message if you want some infos



Haha thanks! Will do!


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## BlackflagsOverChi (May 12, 2019)

Hello! I am about to be in Spain in a few days and am looking for some info on squats and such. If you have any tips or info, l'd be very appreciative. 

Thanks!


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## timetraveler (Aug 14, 2019)

Is Spain pretty dog friendly?


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## almostvicious (Aug 14, 2019)

timetraveler said:


> Is Spain pretty dog friendly?


They have to be on a leash and muzzle on the trains, but other than that Spain with a dog is super chill


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## timetraveler (Aug 16, 2019)

almostvicious said:


> They have to be on a leash and muzzle on the trains, but other than that Spain with a dog is super chill


Ok, thank you!


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## almostvicious (Oct 27, 2019)

update: the las gatas house got evicted and guess where those girls live now.. drumroll.. Barcelona x) 
That being said, I was feeling nostalgic of the warmth of Spain so yeah if you get a chance to go there you definitely should


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## roguetrader (Oct 27, 2019)

when in Barcelona do you ever hear anyone mention any squats in the Badalona area ? we stayed there in my truck about 10 years ago - at the time there were 2 big squatted factories, one called Boombaclaat was pretty well run / together... that area is a good place if you live in vehicles coz it's an industrial area with loads of room on the streets and empty warehouses everywhere, plus it's got an Underground station so it's easy to get to Barcelona Central and back... one yard we stayed in the owners paid 40 people 20,000euros to leave ASAP coz they wanted to start developing the land - as soon as we left they built a huge brick wall in about 2 hours flat to keep everyone out ! would love to know if there's still a scene in that part of the city....


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## almostvicious (Oct 27, 2019)

roguetrader said:


> when in Barcelona do you ever hear anyone mention any squats in the Badalona area ? we stayed there in my truck about 10 years ago - at the time there were 2 big squatted factories, one called Boombaclaat was pretty well run / together... that area is a good place if you live in vehicles coz it's an industrial area with loads of room on the streets and empty warehouses everywhere, plus it's got an Underground station so it's easy to get to Barcelona Central and back... one yard we stayed in the owners paid 40 people 20,000euros to leave ASAP coz they wanted to start developing the land - as soon as we left they built a huge brick wall in about 2 hours flat to keep everyone out ! would love to know if there's still a scene in that part of the city....



Never heard of those places before. To be honest thats kind of the thing with Barcelona there's lots of empty buildings so there's always new squats but they also get evicted often. I might know the crew but in a different house now. There's 3-4 squats at the moment in the industrial areas between Baro de viver and Bon Pastor so i don't really know


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