Irregular Connections: Everyday Energy Politics in Catalonia

Abstract

While questions of energy and energy transition have become hotly contested, the abstract and fetishized conception of energy that dominates contemporary political debates occludes connections to everyday life. By tracing the activities of Catalan activist network Alianza contra la Pobreza Energética (Alliance against Energy Poverty or APE), this article seeks to excavate the political possibilities opened up by a more everyday energy politics. The article addresses the practice of illegal utilities connections among the urban poor of Catalonia, arguing that this constitutes a form of makeshift urbanism resonant of that conceptualized from within ‘Southern’ cities. These ‘irregular connections’ to urban infrastructure networks are then distinguished from the ‘irregular connections’ formed between people within the collectivized social infrastructure of APE. APE, I argue, translate ‘energy’ as social reproduction, framing their struggle for the right to energy around the right to sustain life with dignity. This, I suggest, is the starting point for a feminist praxis capable of creating new and unruly subjectivities, reconfiguring reproductive relations in more caring and collective directions, and ultimately challenging the violence of the commodity form.

Confronting Energy Poverty in Europe: A Research and Policy Agenda

“…For example, in 2015, the Parliament of Catalonia voted on a law on energy poverty, which regulates, among other items, the thorny issues of disconnections and debt. The regional law stems from a range of civil society initiatives, and can be particularly traced back to the active advocacy and practical work of the "Alliance against energy poverty" [103]. At the national level, although a range of instruments were already present, a very comprehensive strategy was adopted in 2019.…”

New Municipalism and the State: Remunicipalising Energy in Barcelona, from Prosaics to Process

“…Inspired in part by the success of Podemos in the EU elections later that year, activists in Barcelona—from a range of urban struggles including PAH, and campaigners against energy and water privatisation—decided to embark upon a municipal project, led by the popular spokeswoman of PAH Ada Colau. Joan Subirat’s provocation that “the local is more global than the national” is prescient in this origin story: PAH and their “sister group” Alianza contra la Pobreza Energética (APE—the Alliance Against Energy Poverty; see Angel 2019), both pivotal in Barcelona En Comú’s formation, are in large part constituted by Latin American migrants, with Ecuadorian migrants particularly instrumental in the early establishment of PAH (Suarez 2017). Accordingly, the relational constitution of this municipalist project stretches far beyond the urban and national context.…”

The politics of domestic energy vulnerability in the Barcelona region, between deconfinement and reconfinement

“…In these accounts, ordinary practices constitute alternatives to more direct contestations seeking to overturn embedded interests, and are capable of both attracting a wider range of participants and reclaiming power through incremental steps. This approach provides stimulating cross-seeding opportunities with the energy vulnerability approach, as shown by James Angel's account of the activism of the Catalan Alliance against Energy Poverty, which contests the unequal power relations between vulnerable consumers and energy utilities by creating new "social infrastructure" dedicated to the defence of energy poor households (Angel, 2019).…”