This Saturday afternoon the Sant’s Major Festival in Barcelona with the reading of proclamation in charge of the Dharma Electric Company, a music group from this neighborhood that have recently completed 50 years of history. In their parliament, the members of the band have talked about their artistic career, which is deeply rooted in Sants, and have vindicated the battles that the neighborhood is currently waging, with special emphasis on the new mortuarythe speculation and the mass tourism with the consequent price increase.
From a balcony of the Casa del Mig in the Espanya Industrial park, the Dharma has defined the Sants neighborhood as a “village of neighborhood fights and independent” that has obtained facilities such as Las Cotxeres, Can Vies and Can Batlló, and has encouraged the campaign to continue ‘Stop Tanatori‘, a facility located in the old Germans Climent factory, which entities and residents consider an “extreme case of speculation”.
The musicians have also claimed a neighborhood of Sants “where our sons and daughters, grandsons and granddaughters they don’t have to leave against their will, where tourist flats and speculators have no place”, “a ‘vila’ where our neighbors are not tourists or digital nomads with high purchasing power who close the door to the possibility of finding affordable rentals”, they have added. In this sense, they have underlined the current difficulty in accessing a decent housingas well as the evictions “fruit of speculation and precarious salaries”.
The speech has also had pro-independence overtones. “Currently, in a globalized world, those who do not fight for their own culture are doomed to disappear. With a state of its own this would be easier“, they have pointed out, to later regret that, while the political parties do not understand each other, it will be they themselves who will defend “with tooth and nail” the cultural heritage.
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On the other hand, the group has highlighted the “hard-working and fighting” character of Sants, the neighborhood that for them has been “a place of inspiration” at the time of composing their songs. Likewise, they have remembered that, during these festivities, the Dharma will offer a free concert.
The Sants festivities, one of the most emblematic of the Catalan capital along with those of Gràcia, will be extended until August 27 and they have programmed a great variety of activities and concerts around their also decorated streets.