To understand what the Cyber*Forat is, we have to explain a bit about the neighbourhood of Santa Catalina, located in the historical center of Barcelona, Spain. Unlike many other European cities, Barcelona’s downtown still has some poor neighborhoods, where lack of infrastructures and social services is counterbalanced by a special richness in characters and projects. Santa Catalina is one such part of the town, affected by a massive “renewal plan” by the city council, which is currently responsible for tearing down almost 70% of this medieval puzzle of small streets.

In the past years several squatters, geeks, activists and interesting people in general have moved to Santa Catalina, where they have found a neighbourhood full of conflicts but ready to accept them and, in some cases, fight together. The politicians of all colours are decided to change this area into a huge shopping mall for tourists, and classy residences for rich people.

At the same time this is one of the most important immigration areas, and the social texture has been a popular one since decades. So conflict is always just around the corner –policemen are more aggressive than usual here, and they feel nervous when they walk around in these streets. People who have been living here all their lives have to stand against constant pressure from big property owners who want to buy their houses and transform them into fancy lofts. Migrants from everywhere have to constantly watch their back because they could be deported at any time, as Barcelona’s mayor organises an enormous festival (the “Forum de las Culturas”) where politicians from all around the world talk about integration and justice !

Theatre of one of the biggest conflicts between people and authorities was the square popularly known as “Forat de la Vergonya” (“Hole of shame” in Catalan), where the city council’s insane will to build a subterranean parking (just where the neighbours had set up an autonomous green area) evolved into a popular struggle which, in the end, made the politicians give up to their project. Just around the corner, in a squatted place called “Racó del Forat” (“The corner of the hole”), a (very small) bunch of people decided to open up a free internet café and workshop: Cyber*Forat opened up on the 17 of September, 2003.

After many problems, we could finally set up the place with a local network of 10 fairly old (Pentium -1) workstations, each of them running Debian GNU/Linux, with a fairly slow ADSL connection to the outside world. We also set up a laser printer, some cd burners, and a couple of good servers. All the material we used was either donated, or recycled directly from the trash bins, and a lot of time was spent trying to set up some decent machines and make them work. We decided to use only free software, and to support the Debian distribution of GNU/Linux, which we consider to be the best, more stable, more funny and more “ethical” operating system currently available.

Besides providing free internet access and printing, we organized 2 “Introduction to Linux” workshops (each of them lasted for 6 weeks), and some smaller workshops about specific subjects (i.e. cryptography...). Meanwhile, in the lower floor (yes, the place had two floors!) we set up an autonomous “kafeta” where people could just come to have a beer or coffee at popular prices, listen to some music and have a talk . At the same time, the “kafeta” allowed us to pay for our internet connection, which was our major expense.

We were open 3 days a week, and we had an impressive amount of people coming to visit us from the first week. Neighbours, travellers, local and foreign squatters, were happy to come and sit in front of a computer without having to keep an eye on the watch (of course this was generating some large queues...) In July we had to leave the place, and we squatted another one nearby. We have been working on the new place all summer and we will open it for the first time on Sunday 7.11.04.

We have now some faster computers (Pentium-III) and a faster Internet connection, a nicer “kafeta” and a lot of ideas. We set up a website (http://www.squat.net/cyberforat) which will be our “electronic blackboard” in the next months, and we are organizing an european meeting of computer activists in December. We are planning new workshops on free software, because we think one of the most important things we can do is to fight against Microsoft’s colonization of people’s mind. We also try to spread up an intelligent use of technology, where people are active subjects using technologic tools and having fun, and not passive spectators fed up with products.

So, that’s what we are and if you want to visit us, we are in C/ Metges, 18, Barcelona.

Cyber*Forat

http://cyberforat.squat.net/