The Azora Tenants Struggle to Stay Put
The story of the Azora tenants started in late summer 2019 when Solvia (the real estate arm of Sabadell Bank) sold their residences to the investment fund Azora. Azora implemented new leases, featuring gradual increases of up to 80% over the contract’s duration, bypassing the rule stabilising rent during the minimum 7-year lease. Azora aimed to impress investors by showcasing the rapid appreciation of assets based on rental streams. However, for tenants, this signalled disposability. Sandra, a tenant leader in the Azora community, expressed, “They just don’t care; I mean, they prefer that the current tenants move out, and they find new tenants to rent the flats; they think there will always be someone who will pay that price. And well, given the impossibility of negotiating with them, we started doing everything we could.”
After tenant communities formed in Badalona, militants from the Barcelona Tenants’ Union (BTU) provided support. Azora tenants initiated actions against rent hikes, boycotting visits by prospective tenants and displaying banners proclaiming “Ens Quedem” (“We Stay Put”).
The Azora conflict mirrors a wider dynamic observed in BTU’s general tenants’ meetings: rent conflicts tend to arise when properties change hands. The new landlords exploit contract expirations to terminate agreements or impose new conditions, primarily rent increases. The tenants’ problem centred around mechanisms allowing a high tenant turnover: the lease and the Urban Rent Act. Disobedience to both became the core of the tenants’ movement’s civil disobedience strategy: Ens Quedem. The strategy involves tenants disobeying official contract-termination notices, collectivising conflicts, and negotiating new rental conditions collectively.
The Azora tenants started disobeying the law and their contracts on January 2. David and Pablo, two tenants from Badalona, had an appointment to sign their new rental lease at Azzam’s headquarters– Azora’s property management company. They entered with 14 organised tenants and union members, complaining about not having the chance to read the 30-page contract beforehand. The tenants decided to leave without signing the imposed conditions.
One month later, on February 3, 2022, tenant Jose had a scheduled appointment to sign his new contract. He planned to disobey the contract signature. However, this time, tenants escalated their pressure, organising an action with more than 50 Azora tenants and union activists and with the presence of news and media outlets. Paqui, acting as a spokesperson from Azora tenants, said during a speech: “We came here today to accompany Jose because today was the signing of his new lease. A contract that we know is an abusive contract.”
The abusive nature of the contract was evident not only in the negotiation process but also in its content. BTU lawyers identified at least 10 abusive clauses that would be the subject of a collective action by the tenants against Azora. Ironically, one of the abusive clauses falsely stated that all terms of the contract had been freely negotiated, precisely highlighting the lack of free negotiation and balanced bargaining power that in the writing and signing of rental contracts.
Rental contracts are crucial in the constant updating of contemporary urban enclosures imposing unbearable conditions on housing access. During the February 3 action, the spokesperson for BTU tenants explained how contract terms were a way of blackmailing the tenants: “Azora is a vulture fund that has hoarded housing, extorting families by forcing them to pay rent increases of up to 80%. We won’t leave the office until the Azora directors show a minimum willingness to negotiate. We won’t accept any increase in rent, any abusive contractual clause.”
Collective actions gave tenants the strength to oppose the discipline imposed by rental contracts and the financialisation of their homes. Building strong communities of resistance and disobedience of rental contracts was a strategy to stop the slow violence of dispossession, which could take the form of eviction and the loss of the home or accepting the rent increase, implying the further loss of income before rent pressures.
Rents
Community
Financialisation
Slow violence
