The battle of Valcárcel

As the car started, she thought she could just as well have stayed by the beach reading. In August she was just a summer vacationer. If she wanted demonstrations, camp-outs, squats and so forth, the Puerta del Sol was a few minutes on foot from her house in Madrid. So she had dragged her feet, but her friends were so enthusiastic, and so young, that at last she got in the car - but with little faith.

Faith was what she got from this trip, and not just a little of it. At midnight when she returned to Rota she was drunk, replete, happily intoxicated with faith. She had seen one of those battles which, just because waged, are in themselves a victory. The Valcárcel school, a wonder of the southern Neoclassical style, was built in 1760 to house a fine arts academy. The palatial edifice, too big for such a use, was soon converted to a hospice, as mental hospitals were called in the 18th century, and so it remained until 1961 when, renamed after the then-governor Rodríguez de Valcárcel, it became a school that was closed in 2003. The government delegate then sold it to a hotel group that proposed to turn it into luxury accommodation, but later gave up the project.

Thus far, the description that you can read in any tourist guidebook. The degree of deterioration of the building - much worse than would seem reasonable after eight years of closure - is hard to explain and, if nothing had been done to stop it, would have resulted in ruin in a fairly short time. This will no longer happen, because on June 18, 2011, a local group linked to the Indignation movement occupied the building, to turn it into a cultural center.

This sit-in did not just consist of gathering on the pavement and talking through a megaphone. The Assembly of Valcárcel, admirably organized, started working on the building right away. A volunteer architect looked it over top to bottom to see which areas could be used, and which had to be roped off as dangerous. In just two months the activists cleaned, refitted and disinfected a wing of the lower floor. Now a library and a game room are there, available to all neighbors, as well as several classrooms. The activists include many teachers, who for several hours a week give retake classes to local schoolchildren who failed their June exams. Good ideas being contagious, the place has attracted other volunteers ready to teach what they know. In the courtyard a huge blackboard details the center's educational offering: workshops ranging from silkscreen to dance, plus the free concerts and shows that will take place this summer in this splendid quadrangle.

On the roof, the restorers have built a dovecote that now houses the birds whose droppings have for years deteriorated walls and moldings, and are repairing the clogged drainpipes, which are responsible for the serious damage to the roof. The state of the building is so important to them that they have organized a nightly watch to prevent extraneous persons from camping in it. They are rightly proud of what they have done, and the summer vacationer felt it had been worth the trouble of coming, just to hear them. They also hope to consolidate Valcárcel as a permanent cultural center, in spite of looming problems.

"Since we came here," they say, "everyone is suddenly interested in the building. They were letting it fall to pieces, you know. The windows were broken, the drains blocked, and now..."

Now, the Government Delegation in Cádiz has the opportunity to recognize their work, which it ought to have done long ago. And if - once the litigation with the hotel group is resolved (they have now suddenly remembered signing the contract, over whose terms they were still haggling) - it does not reach an agreement with the Assembly of Valcárcel, this will deprive the Viñas neighborhood of a useful cultural center.

Meanwhile, those who feel the temptation of discovering that miracles exist, have only to walk in through the main door. And for those who still opine that the May 15 movement is just a lot of druggy rich kids who sit in the public square and drink, the Valcárcel school is there in the center of Cádiz, not far from the beach of La Caleta. Go and see it. It's worth the trouble.