The neighborhood movement of the San Nicasio neighborhood
This research seeks to analyze, on the one hand, citizen participation in the San Nicasio neighborhood between 1950 and 1980 and, on the other, the influence of this in the urban development of the district. The work method, based on the verification through documentary sources of the testimonies of the nineteen oral sources, provides internal validity to the results obtained in this analysis. However, the conclusions extracted are not extrapolated to other studies on citizen participation in different populations, not even to other districts of the same municipality, because the characterization of an urban social movement varies depending on the sociodemographic features of the population and theits environment development process.
This neighborhood is inhabited, in the period of time studied, by manual workers who arrive from the provinces of the peninsular interior to the capital. However, when they settle in San Nicasio, there are a neighborhood surrounded by orchards and without any public equipment. This causes a double contradiction in them. On the one hand, with the capitalist economic system in which they have just integrated as industrial workers, since it collides with their place of residence. On the other, with their conscience as owners and taxpayers, because they assume that as such they have the right to be provided with basic public services.
Existing studies on urban social movements focus, above all, on areas of self-constructions found in situations of exclusion and how neighborhood action contributes to creation true districts. However, the origin of the San Nicasio neighborhood is not located in a Chabolas neighborhood, but in excessive and lacking urban development of planning.
The neighborhood movement in San Nicasio begins at the end of the sixties and remains active today. For more than five decades, neighbors have formed an unconventional participation system to transfer their daily problems, related to their reference environment, to the authorities. The testimony of the interviewees shows that this is a neighborhood in which people begin to live without being provided with any kind of public care. In addition, and despite not being reflected in the writings about the history of Leganés and this neighborhood, San Nicasio has a comparative grievance for its development: the military train passage. This not only divides the district into two and hinders communications with the urban nucleus, but also causes serious citizen security and traffic problems.
The San Nicasio Neighbors Association is legalized in 1977, during the transition process. The social synergies that awaken the situation of the neighborhood bind to policies, the result of the arrival of democracy. The period of time studied only allows the beginning of the activity of the neighborhood association. Diego catalogs these years as the takeoff of the association, in which all the participation mechanisms and their pillars of action formalize. In addition to their work to provide the neighborhood of Infrastructure and Services that allow neighbors to live independently of the Centro District, the association has an important role to form a true urban community. It is also observed the relevance of women in the organization and participation in the protests organized in this district.
Many of the changes that occur in the neighborhood in the following years appear in the improvement proposals raised by the association in its beginnings, such as the withdrawal of the military road passage, the improvement of the neighborhood transport networkand the creation of areas
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The neighborhood movement as a form of participation
Citizen: San Nicasio (1950-1980) Bello Cedillo, Laura
green. Its main merit, they maintain from the association, is to promote these changes to accelerate over time through institutional pressure.
The Neighborhood Association is not an entity too politicized. Unlike other associations, political or union formations are not aligned. Also, the jump to the political activity of three of its members is personal. Only one of the interviewees catalogs the association as a political movement. The rest, including the same organization, reject this approach.
The eighties were the decade in which the association consolidates its role as a social agent of the neighborhood. While these are years in which the association’s work begins to take effect, since the neighborhood already has more services and equipment, other problems begin in the district. Many neighbors live long -term unemployment situations, given the disconnection in the labor market with industrial conversion. In addition, the heroin ghost begins to gather San Nicasio. All respondents know at least a case of a neighbor who has died as a result of drug use. The association is dedicated, then, to provide the neighborhood of a greater offer of leisure and free time. Their responsible are attributed to the creation of sports schools and cultural centers, as well as the excursions organization.
From the nineties until today, the San Nicasio Association lives an adaptation process. This is a shared phenomenon in all current urban social movements, according to the FANVM coordinator. The Association’s concerns coincide with the pillars of action of other social movements, such as environmentalism, since one of the current aspirations of the San Nicasio Neighbors Association is the pedestrianization of the district’s core and the creation of green areas;The fight against sexist violence, calling acts of repulsion and organizing violet points to avoid any type of aggression towards women in the patron saint parties;the anti -skucios movement and the integration of the immigrant population that has settled in the neighborhood in recent years.
The adaptation to change and the search for solutions to the short -term problems of the district is essential, in this case and in other neighborhood associations, so that its activity is still legitimized over the years. The results obtained allow to affirm that, although neighborhood associationism fails to rectify the urban development of San Nicasio, this if it promotes the variation of its infrastructure and services equipment.
During the period of time studied, it is corroborated that there is a causal relationship between citizen mobilization and the progress of the neighborhood benefits in at least one assumption: that of the installation of the electric laying and in the improvement of the coverage of this toroot of repeated manifestations with candles in the district. The causal relationship between the institutional activity of the neighborhood association and the improvement of the district is revealed with the installation of traffic lights in the level steps and the construction of the bridge that connects San Nicasio with Alcorcón. But it is the reciprocity between the actions of the association and the creation of a link between the neighbors as the urban community the most validated relationship by all the sources of the investigation
According to the doubts raised in question 1, about what were and why the main problems of San Nicasio between 1950 and 1980 arise, it is found that the neighbors are a neighborhood without basic facilities, such as the supply of light, water, the sewer network and the paving of the streets;nor essential public services, such as education and health. The reason for these deficiencies is in the growth of this peripheral neighborhood prior to the establishment of an urban plan. The provision of these equipment occurs after the construction of the neighborhood.
Question 2 is about the level of mobilization and types of protests carried out by the association. In the period of time observed, at least four neighborhood protests actions are collected: the detention of the scammer, two sitting and the popular marches with candles. Therefore, neighborhood action in San Nicasio is not very frequent, but has high levels of participation. They are usually peaceful mobilizations.
In response to question 3, on the impact of this social movement in the district, according to the causal relationships exposed above, two types of effects can be established. At the social-community level, the neighborhood association has a very important role. It is attributed the consolidation of the patron saint festivities and the achievement of a complete catalog of leisure and free time for the neighborhood. As a consequence, the association contributes to the conformation of the feeling of urban community that still persists in San Nicasio. At the level of public benefits its impact is not so conclusive, since even from the same association they recognize that their role of accelerating a process that would end up occurring with the passing of the years.
The role of the San Nicasio Neighbors Association during the 1950s and 1980collaboration. His greatest achievements are the creation of the collective feeling of belonging to a space of which they are alien, as most immigrant neighbors, and the defense of participatory decentralization, that is, of the involvement of citizenship in the management of whatpublic. Consequence of the latter, it is possible to affirm that this association is a democratic school for many of its partners and neighbors.
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