page_title: Squatting
section_title: Europe
hierarchical_section_title: Squatting / Europe
caption_attribution_description: Català: Façana del Centre Social Ocupat Autogestionat (CSOA) La Carboneria al Carrer Urgell de Barcelona. Març 2013
context_page_description: Squatting is the action of occupying an abandoned or unoccupied area of land or a building, usually residential, that the squatter does not own, rent or otherwise have lawful permission to use. Author Robert Neuwirth suggested in 2004 that there were one billion squatters globally.
  Squatting occurs worldwide and tends to occur when people who are poor and homeless find empty buildings or land to occupy for housing. It has a long history, broken down by country below. In developing countries and least developed countries, shanty towns often begin as squatted settlements. There are pavement dwellers in India and South Africa, represented by groups such as Slum Dwellers International and Abahlali baseMjondolo. In Hong Kong there are rooftop slums. In Brazil, there are favelas and large social movements of thousands of people such as the Homeless Workers' Movement and the Landless Workers' Movement. Squatted settlements are known in Spanish-speaking countries under terms such as villa miseria, pueblos jóvenes, okupas and asentamientos irregulares.
context_section_description: In many European countries, there are squatted houses used as residences and also larger squatted projects where people pursue social and cultural activities. An examples of the latter is a former military barracks called Metelkova in Slovenia.
  Squat Milada in Prague, Czech Republic was occupied in 1997 and evicted in 2009. Its longevity was in part due to the building not existing in the Land Registry. Klinika was an occupied social centre between 2014 and 2019.
  There was a big squatting movement in the newly formed state of Austria following the First World War. Famine was a significant problem for many people in Austria and the "Siedler" (settler) movement developed as these people tried to create shelter and a source of food for themselves. The Ernst Kirchweger Haus (EKH) in Vienna was squatted as a social centre in 1990 and legalised in 2008. Nowadays from time to time empty buildings are squatted and in the most instances given up after negotiations with the authorities. There are some exceptions like in 2014, when about 1,500 riot police officers, a tank-like police vehicle, a police water cannon and helicopters have been used to clear a building occupied by the group "Pizzeria Anarchia" in Vienna.
  Christiania in Copenhagen, Denmark is an independent community of almost 900 people founded in 1971 on the site of an abandoned military zone. In Copenhagen, as in other European cities such as Berlin and Amsterdam, the squatter movement was large in the 1980s. It was a social movement, providing housing and alternative culture. A flashpoint came in 1986 with the Battle of Ryesgade. Another flashpoint came in 2007 when Ungdomshuset was evicted. While not technically a squat until 14 December 2006, it was a social centre used by squatters and people involved in alternative culture more generally. After a year of protests, the city council donated a new building.
  In early twentieth century France, several artists who would later become world-famous, such as Guillaume Apollinaire, Amedeo Modigliani and Pablo Picasso squatted at the Bateau-Lavoir, in Montmartre, Paris. Paris moved to legitimize some popular artist squats in the mid-2000s by purchasing and renovating the buildings for artist–residents. An example is Les Frigos. In the 2010s there have been several land squats protesting against large infrastructure projects. These are known collectively as Zone to Defend or ZAD (French: zone à défendre), with the most famous one being the ZAD de Notre-Dame-des-Landes.
  Starting from December 2012, Greek Police initiated extensive raids in a number of squats in Athens, arresting and charging with offences all illegal occupants (mostly anarchists). Squats including Villa Amalia were evicted. A march in support of the 92 arrestees drew between 3,000 and 8,000 people. After Villa Amalia, Villa Skaramanga and then Villa Lela Karagianni were evicted. Lela Karagianni had been squatted since 1998 and was later reoccupied. The name came from the street, named for a Greek World War II resistance leader of that name. From 2015 onwards Athens has seen refugee squats in response to the European migrant crisis which are anarchist and self-organised. In 2019, several squats in Exarcheia were evicted by the Greek state. Some of the migrants evicted set up a camp outside the Parliament at Syntagma Square.
  Squatting in Moldova started with Centro 73 in Chişinău in September 2010. This project was evicted soon after.
  The oldest squat in Poland, Rozbrat, was created in 1994 in Poznań. There are also squats in Białystok, Gdańsk, Gliwice, Warsaw and Wrocław.
  Geneva in Switzerland had 160 buildings illegally occupied and more than 2,000 squatters, in the middle of the 1990s. The RHINO (Retour des Habitants dans les Immeubles Non-Occupés, in English: Return of Inhabitants to Non-Occupied Buildings) was a 19-year-long squat in Geneva. It occupied two buildings on the Boulevard des Philosophes, a few blocks away from the main campus of the University of Geneva. The RHINO organisation often faced legal troubles, and Geneva police evicted the inhabitant
caption: Facade of the evicted Carboneria squat in Barcelona
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