The leader of Desokupa now affirms that he is not going to remove the canvas after assuring that he would remove it

“After the latest events, we believe that all limits have been exceeded and we will remove the canvas of our own free will today at 6:00 p.m.,” Esteve had assured. “We hope we have not disappointed you. This is not a defeat ”, he added on Twitter, around three in the afternoon on Friday. At 6:30 p.m. he published another tweet saying no, that “the canvas stays”. “Has anyone thought that we were going to freak out?” He asks himself, on his Twitter profile, in a message that accompanies a video in which he is seen drinking a beer. Esteve assures that the electoral board has dismissed the appeals filed by PSOE and ERC to withdraw it.

The banner has the slogan “You to Morocco, Desokupa to Moncloa” and is accompanied by a photo of Pedro Sánchez and Daniel Esteve, founder of Desokupa. In addition, the poster puffs up the expulsions from homes and pointed to Unidas Podemos and ERC with the label: “We will miss you all.”

This morning the canvas was covered with numerous posters in defense of the right to decent housing and against evictions. “No rents, no mortgages, no debts. Free, universal, quality housing under workers’ control”, could be read in a message signed by the Madrid Housing Movement. However, around 10:00 in the morning the company in charge of managing that advertising space, Urban Visión, had withdrawn the anti-eviction proclamations.

“As you know today, a group of anchovies would come down, cover it, we would vacate their canvas in an hour and the poster would be back on fire, online, press, television, radio…”, Esteve had initially emphasized in a recording broadcast on his Twitter profile. “We have multiplied our expectations by five, we have exceeded 10 million euros in advertising impacts. It is a real madness ”, he added. Immediately afterwards, on the other hand, Esteve considered that “for the good” of his company and its “workers” he had decided to remove the canvas. It was a lie.

A classic of political communication

These types of posters have become a classic of political and business communication to such an extent that their use has become hegemonized in recent years. In recent weeks, the Desokupa banner had been joined by the one that Vox placed in the old Santa Bárbara brewery, at the confluence of Goya and Alcalá streets in Madrid.

Various groups were attacked on that giant banner. A hand was seen throwing away the various symbols that represent feminism, the LGTBI collective, the 2030 Agenda, communism, the squatter movement and the Catalan independence flag. But, as a result of various complaints, the Madrid Electoral Board forced Vox to withdraw it.

The community of residents of the Atocha street building was to receive 8,000 euros for maintaining the Desokupa sign for three weeks, a price agreed upon by the advertising company and the client. “We do not set the price,” she said this week, in statements to elDiario.es, the president of the building’s community.

However, the lawyer Xaime da Pena, a financier of the banner with a history of controversy behind him, assured in conversation with this newspaper that it had cost them 40,000 euros to hang it from the 3rd to the 23rd. So far this year , the building has housed four different canvases. In this sense, the income for the neighbors varies according to some factors, such as the size of the same and the time they are placed. According to the president, the minimum income, in general, that the community receives for hanging a canvas is 5,000 euros.