3a session: Tuesday 10 July, 6.45-9 pm
Joan Miquel Gual and Assembly for Sustainable Tourism (Assemblea de Barris per un Turisme Sostenible, ABTS)
Film discussion group El poble desnonat

Ficción inmobiliaria (Real-estate Fiction) 1, 2 and 3 (Left Hand Rotation, 2013, 2015 and 2016) are three shorts from an audiovisual project, made using found footage that is critical of gentrification or social substitution caused by rises in rental prices. The creative community, Left Hand Rotation, has probably been one of the main driving forces behind the popularisation of this concept in Spain, through workshops entitled “Gentrificación no es un nombre de señora” (Gentrification is not a girl’s name) and aimed at social and neighbourhood movements, as well as the creation of a virtual museum—El Museo de los Desplazados (Museum of the Displaced), and the recovery of archive material from sources as diverse as Italian neorealism, Hollywood films like Roger Rabbit and current and past series and cartoons. It is an artistic collective specialising in the art of quotations, that is to say using and restoring fragments and drawing out the political significance of popular film culture that we may have overlooked as spectators.

After the screening, the Neighbourhood Assembly for Sustainable Tourism (ABTS) will explain the role it plays in combating gentrification caused by tourism in Barcelona, the networks it participates in and ways to take part and contribute towards changing the current situation, so disadvantageous to a large part of the population.

Joan Miquel Gual is a member of the Memòria en moviment association, a housing activist at La Borda SCCL, a lecturer in film history at the Open University of Catalonia and the curator of the El poble desnonat film series.

ABTS: created 3 years ago, ABTS is the coordinating space for some 30 neighbourhood and environmental organisations and collectives from Barcelona, united by a critical view of the city’s economic and tourism model. They primarily work to create an alternative account of tourism in the city, raising public awareness and encouraging social mobilisation on the matter.