KASA DE LA MUNTANYA – Interview
Squat, Barcelona
Historical place, at the origin of the squat movement in Barcelona since 1989, the Kasa de la Muntanya still stands strong!
In the heart of the Gràcia neighborhood, the squat embodies a seemingly bygone world, in total opposition to the tourist saturation, prevalent on the heights of Park Güell. A true pirate enclave held by a solid, tenacious, and organized collective, which we had the chance to meet during the Festa de la Primavera 2026! Let’s go!
| Interview by Polka B. |
Can you trace the history of the building that now houses the squat, before 1989?
Kasa De La Muntanya : Of course, it’s an interesting history and we spent many efforts in recover all the details we could.
It was built in 1905 when the ultra catholic rich and slavery related family Eusebi Güell was paying Gaudí for designing and building the famous Park Güell, which in the beginning was intended to be a luxury residential complex. Due to the inestability and social unrest of those years they thought some protection for the complex was necessary. As Güell family was the owner of vast portions of land in this area, they decided to act for themselves and offered the local government to build a big defense building and lend it to the government if it agreed to install Guardia Civil (a kind of spanish police corp) on it in order to protect the near luxury complex.
At the end, the plans for the luxury residential area failed and they only could build the gardens, which now are Park Güell, but the beautiful police station prevailed through years until the 80′ when only few Guardia Civil families still were living there. At that time there was a nationalist armed group called Terra Lliure that attacked the building in 1983 and the remaining policemen and their families ran away. So the building was then abandoned and the Güell family and also the government had completely forgotten about the place, until 1989 of course.
How was born the squat of Kasa de la Muntanya in 1989 ?
There was a bunch of people coming from the very first political squats circles, like Cross 10, one of the first freed spaces in Sants neighbourhood.
They started to look for a place to create a new project and somehow they heard about this abandoned building. They entered the place and Kasa de la Muntanya became one of the very first long-standing squats in Barcelona squating history and a true networking and logistic center for the city movement.
The house has no major principles apart from antifascism, the squat/housing movement and autonomy. This is because is intended to be a heterogeneous space open for everyone no matter in which spectrum of the radical left you are so different groups of people can develop and meet here.
Can you present the different activities of the place? And the political and solidarity causes that you support?
We have some fixed events that we usually do every year; those are the Spring Party, which is basically a huge party for all political people of Barcelona (this year with Krav Boca as the main attraction), then the Calçotada which is a catalan tradition that gathers people around grilled calçots (kind of onion) and wine.
We also organize a great self managed and antifa martial arts exhibition with a ring and everything. And finally we have a Cabaret with a lot of circus, dance and equilibrium performers. Ah, and also we have our birthday, when we invite people from Barcelona collectives to a lunch.
All those events generate resources to finance ourselves and a lot of collectives and political causes throughout the year. Apart from that we have a great gym where we do Muay Thai and fitness classes.
And then we have a lot of different political events, collective dinners, debates, gatherings, some of which we organize and some are organized by external political collectives and we just let them use the place due that is so useful for political collectives the infrastructure we have here.
These events generate no money but a lot of political consciousness.
What is the context of your neighborhood? You are on the slopes of Gràcia, very close to the entrance of Park Güell, a major tourist attraction in Barcelona. How has the neighborhood evolved over the past thirty years?
Well, we all are not here since the beginning, but the people here who has seen the evolve of the neighbourhood, say this was completely different and the tourism level was a fraction of what is today. This use to be a poor quarter, with a very popular culture coming from the shanties areas that scattered all around these hills. This was the place where inmigrants from different parts of Spain were settling because were the outskirts of the city in the 60′. Also 20 years ago used to be a lot of squatted buildings around.
Now squats are rare and looks like the whole neighbourhood is a prolongation of Park Güell. The park itself is a symbol of whats going on in this city. 15 years ago was completely open for everyone, 10 years ago they imposed a price for entering in the most beautiful parts and now you cannot enter without paying, they stole us our park!
How have the activities of the squat developed, on the fringes of this reality marked by over-tourism?
Right now the major claim of the neighbourhood is against tourism. Is something that concerns everyone here, the venue that arrives to Park Güell entrance is the most transited of Catalunya and here and there we have seen new buildings and souvenir shops grow. Couple of years ago there was an uprising against tourists when Louis Vuitton rented the whole Park for a private event for rich cunts. Its something we share and totally support.
But in our daily routine tourists are a pain in the ass. They constantly try to enter our house if someone leaves the door open just for a couple of minutes and of course they try to access the place when we open for an event so we must have people controlling the entrance at all times.
There has been many times when someone suddently realized we had a group of tourists in our yard. Some of us also use to argue a lot with them when entering/leaving home. At the end is like an endless river of people that is not going to dissapear, but at least we would like to disturb them, like what we did with the painted walls against them.
Apart from some right wing people, the great majority of the neighbourhood accepts us as an important part of the neighbourhood and recognize our fight and we try to take care of the people here as much as possible.
Faced with the aggressiveness of anti-squat policies, how has the Kasa de la Muntanya been able to continue its activities? And still exist today?
It’s been mainly for 3 reasons. The first reason is the way the legal process was managed since the beginning and for around 20 years, with multiple strategies and movements, including stablishing contacts with the council in the last decade in order to try to avoid the eviction but with no concesions at the end.
Second is the strong community built around not only the house, but the squatter movement in Barcelona, specially in 90s and 2000s that made our squat able to resist two assaults of police corps.
Last reason is that the building is cataloged as historical building so the owners can not speculate with it, so it’s of no interest for them to recover. Also they are an extremely rich family that don’t need the money anyway, so they just leave us alone.
Are you in contact with other organizations and self-managed spaces in Barcelona? Are you able to carry out joint actions?
Of course, we are in close contact with almost every squat in the city and we gather sometimes to respond to major threats in political agenda, organize demonstrations and carry on actions. We also participate in different political assemblies all around the city to impulse struggles as a collective.
We have a lot of political links from side to side of Spain and internationally too. Our goal is always to preserve our threatened world and make it bigger and stronger as they want it to be destroyed.
How do you see the future of Kasa de la Muntanya? What are your plans for the future?
Its very important for us to say that we are under threat, the government and the owners have a valid eviction order since 10 years ago and still not coming for us, but someday will be the day.
We are also very concerned about the extreme right rise and we are sure this is something that will have an impact in our current stability.
The aim is to continue the struggle for the city, to be ready and resist against them and against an eventual eviction with all our community strength. Also the idea is to make an international call for comrades to defend the squat, so be ready and stay alert!
