Corrala Utopía

The Guardian reports on the real occupiers--an organization of a network of squatted buildings in Spain. Learn more, in Spanish, here.

Money quote from the article:

In 2010 Spanish banks foreclosed on more than 100,000 households. Macarena, the district of Seville in which Corrala Utopía stands, now has the highest eviction-rate in the city. Yet in Seville's greater metropolitan area alone an estimated 130,000 unsellable, unrentable homes are lying empty.

It's simple math: thousands of families made homeless, not through any fault of their own, but because they were victimized by the financial crisis and continuing austerity budgets + thousands of unsellable, unrentable homes = a natural match.

There are now 5 million umemployed people in Spain. That's the Labor Ministry's number. Not to worry: the official statistics agency lists more than 6 million people as unemployed in the country--which means more than 1/4 of the country's working population is out of work, and the economy's set to contract by 1.4 percent this year.

For a contrasting tidbit, it's been a good year for Amancio Ortega, the Spaniard whose Inditex empire includes the global fast-fashion firm Zara. He's now the 3rd wealthiest man in the world, worth $57 billion.