The project “Sin Estado/Stateless” is part of a collaboration between Santiago Cirugeda, Democracia and Todo Por la Praxis. The proposal has as its objective a multidisciplinary intervention embracing art and architecture, with the background of illegal settlements in La Cañada Real (Madrid), which were being demolished and their inhabitants evicted.
The Cañada Real Galiana is an old transhumance route that shelters more than 2,000 dwellings and nearly 40,000 inhabitants spread over 15 km of land. The first buildings go back to the 1970’s when people from the closest council areas (Vallecas, Getafe and others) put up small constructions there. With time, the settlement has grown and become more complex in composition. The signficant population of long-standing inhabitants has been supplemented by an immigrant population – national and foreign – in which Marrocans and Rumanians are prominent. Drug trafficking and construction businesses starting up on public lands run side by side in La Cañada Real, as do substandard shanty dwellings and detached houses, and illegal hotels and country houses.
The name of the project “Sin Estado/Stateless” suggests two interpretations. First, it is a response to the use of public funding derived from artistic sources and destined for activity of a social nature in an area in which the authorities themselves decline to run any public service. Secondly, it refers to a territory that is marginalised, deregulated and lacking in legal and administrative facilities.
“Sin Estado/Stateless” attempts to consider, from a practical standpoint, the possibilities and contradictions of artistic activity in the social field, approaching La Cañada Real from different perspectives: from mapping to negotiations with the social movements settled there to provide equipment and facilities for the community; and from the generation of processes of visibilization and symbolization of the territory to consideration of the contradictions of the process itself.
Stateless logo 
Chronology 
Rows 
Rows 
Legal Consultant’s Office 
Scale model of Legal Consultant’s Office to stop demolitions 
Merchandising 
Caps 
Patches 
Cocaine kit 
Cocaine kit 
T-Shirts 
“Stateless” kufiya
