On September 28, a very important event took place that went unnoticed amid the flood of information surrounding us. It concerns the presentation of the Comprehensive Law Project for Vulnerable Neighborhoods during a parliamentary session in the Congress of Deputies.
The fact is highly relevant, and it is a pity that it has been overshadowed by the vibrant current events of the past weeks. This text aims to give it visibility and to emphasize some of the reasons that make the Law Project fundamental and the entire work that preceded it by numerous neighborhood associations, other social actors, and political groups.
It is important that it gains visibility and that its proposal be socialized so that it can move forward as soon as possible in the near future. Additionally, it is a law that enters the logic of questioning the boosting of the economic dimension of urban development, which aligns with challenging the ‘mercantilized’ city model that predominates in many of our cities and is linked to the reality that the Sol Occupation (Acampada de Sol) denounces.
“It is a law that enters the logic of questioning the boosting of the economic dimension of urban development”
In the Spanish context, there has never been a legislative framework for action in disadvantaged neighborhoods (as I prefer to call them). Unlike countries such as the United Kingdom, Germany, or France, which equipped themselves with one during the 1980s, our country has never taken that step. However, an autonomous community has developed a legislative framework of great interest: Catalonia, which in two distinct moments (2004 and 2022) gave rise to what we know as “neighborhood laws”, proving that legislative and economic frameworks to address this issue are possible and have positive effects.
The Poverty That Persists in the Neighborhoods
The absence at the national level of a specific framework to tackle the problem of these enclaves leaves unaddressed a reality that undermines the social, economic, and territorial cohesion of cities of all sizes; in other words, it is negative for the city and the territory as a whole, but above all this inaction unjustly keeps residents of these neighborhoods in what academic literature has called the “poverty cycle.” In them, the sum of interrelated forms of exclusion leads to a social and economic disadvantage of great complexity, which reproduces over time and is impossible to reverse without specific integrated policies.
Thus, when a crisis arrives (such as the one caused by the pandemic) or new elements arise that challenge cities (like heat waves and other extreme weather events, or rising energy prices), disadvantaged neighborhoods suffer their consequences to a greater extent. Their situation worsens.
“In the Spanish context, there has never been a legislative framework for action in disadvantaged neighborhoods”
This is a reality that received political attention in the 1980s and 1990s within the framework of the European Union (EU), from where it reached our country, where it had a certain presence in political discourse during the 1990s. But then, as the research work we have been carrying out has highlighted, from the 2000s onward it has disappeared from public discourse and from the political agenda both within the EU and in our own framework. To a large extent, this is explained by the so-called ‘neoliberal turn’ in urbanism and urban planning, theorized by authors such as Brenner, which in the EU materialized in the 2000s through the reform of the Cohesion Policy, from where it moved to the urban axis of the policy and, from there, to our country.
Since then, the current scenario of “financiarización” of the city, which neutralizes the redistributive capacity of urban planning and other policies, and channels its mechanisms toward competitiveness and investment attraction, tends to push issues that do not fit that logic out of the political agenda and discourse. Thus, they fade into the background and eventually fall out of the public sphere, becoming invisible unless there are actors to prevent it. These are the themes that most need institutions to respond because they demand decidedly social actions and public funding to materialize (even though they may also incorporate private resources). This is what has happened with the issue of disadvantaged neighborhoods.
The problem it faces is relevant and cross-cutting across all cities in our country, but it is difficult to make the leap to the political agenda. The way information reaches us also does not help. In general, the media tend to pay attention to urban issues only when an exceptional event occurs capable of capturing the audience’s interest. Consequently, structural urban problems, which persist over time and end up being normalized in the public’s perception, have greater difficulty gaining media attention. This is what has been happening with the issue of disadvantaged neighborhoods.
Neighborhood Mobilization Reaches the Congress
In this context of great difficulty, for several years a group of people and collectives who live in and know the reality of these enclaves very well have organized themselves in the Network for the Comprehensive Law for Vulnerable Neighborhoods to give rise to a process of sharing that has managed to evolve into a legislative text. In this effort and persuasion, it has counted on the accompaniment and support of the political formation Sumar (specifically from deputies of Izquierda Unida). All of this has led to the consolidation of a text that was registered in the Congress on December 11, 2024, and that at the end of September was presented to the public in a parliamentary session to give it visibility and solicit political and social support.
“Structural urban problems, which persist over time and end up being normalized in the public’s perception, have greater difficulty obtaining media attention”
The event was not only timely (for the topic and the moment) and interesting (because it built on extensive knowledge of the neighborhood problems), but it was also tremendously moving because the law that was presented has its roots in the symbolic and political framework of daily life in the neighborhoods and their “strengths” (which is why I prefer not to call them vulnerable), built largely on self-organization, the common good, and mutual aid… words that evoke hope and ways of acting that challenge individualism and the commodification of urban life, which place before us lessons of moral surplus, solidarity, and resilience of great beauty, and which remind us that it is unjust not to give political and social attention to these enclaves and to contribute to their improvement from the abundance of good they contain.
The Comprehensive Law Project for Vulnerable Neighborhoods sits within this perspective and is synergistic with the push to challenge urban policies that center housing at this moment. The issue of disadvantaged neighborhoods, the lack of response to the situation that keeps them permanently disadvantaged, has the same DNA as the demands we are seeing around housing and the transformation of the city model in our country. The political formation that has supported it will surely continue to back it, but it is to be expected and necessary that those ideologically aligned with the proposal also adopt it and integrate it into their program for the upcoming elections. It is not naïve to ask for or expect this: it is human, as is the hope and conviction that move those of us who have been working for a long time from very different contexts so that this problem receives a response.
In collaboration with the “la Caixa” Foundation
