Chabolista.es [editar]

For the right to decent housing

The persistence of slums

Chabolista.es is an awareness campaign launched by Fundación Secretariado Gitano in 2022. Its aim is to denounce the existence of slums in our country: more than 11 000 Roma people still live in slums, representing 2% of the Roma population. Despite improvements in living conditions and a reduction in slums in recent decades, there are still some 270 settlements where many Roma, including many children, live in poor conditions.

Slums are a persistent and discriminatory phenomenon that also affects other groups such as migrants and seasonal workers. Its existence violates the right to decent housing and perpetuates situations of exclusion and poverty.

The Chabolista.es campaign focuses on this situation to appeal to public authorities and society as a whole to achieve decent housing for all. Spain, the fourth largest economy in Europe, cannot allow the persistence of slums where thousands of families live segregated from the rest of society.

The campaign's creativity is based on the audience's interest in the property market. It consists of launching advertisements that mimic the messages of a property portal, ‘a website that shows you the houses that other websites don't show you’.

These are banners and advertisements with an ironic tone, combining texts typical of property advertisements with images of slums.

A website to raise awareness

The communication strategy proposed that all publicity materials redirect users to the Chabolista.es portal, a website calling for the eradication of slums, where users can access a manifesto setting out the main demands of the Fundación Secretariado Gitano. Photographs taken in June 2022 in some slums in Galicia, Andalusia and Madrid are also shown, and the main data on slums in Spain are disseminated.

In addition, the consequences of slums on people's lives are explored in depth through interviews with a group of young people, David Gabarri, Daniel Jiménez and Manuel Gabarri, who grew up in O Portiño; Mercedes Borja, who recounts her life in La Cañada; Pablo Simón, a doctor who treats Romanian Roma families in Granada; and Agustín Rodríguez, the parish priest of La Cañada Real.

The campaign encourages the audience to join in the defence of decent housing and to ask the public authorities for an Action Plan for the Eradication of Slums. 1 000 posters and 3 100 information leaflets have also been produced and translated into English and the co-official languages.

An event to generate awareness

The Fundación Secretariado Gitano presented the campaign on 20 October 2022 ion Madrid. Presented by journalist Belén de la Banda, participants included Sara Giménez, president of the FSG; Isidro Rodríguez, director general of the FSG; Ana Segovia, head of social advocacy; and David Gabarri and Mercedes Borja, who recounted their experiences.
Newspapers such as El País, La Razón, Diario.es and La Vanguardia; agencies such as Efe and Europa Press; and radio stations such as RNE and Cope, among others, reported on the launch. From that date until 10 November, an advertising campaign was carried out in digital media through programmatic advertising and retargeting and advertising on social networks, exceeding 9 million impressions and more than 98 000 clicks. Likewise, the newspaper El País published an editorial urging the public authorities to eradicate slums.

National and European dissemination

In 2023, the campaign was rolled out in different Spanish regions through the offices of the Fundación Secretariado Gitano and also at European level.

This campaign is funded by the IRPF programme ‘Other purposes of social interest’ of the Ministry of Social Rights and Agenda 2030 and co-funded by the European Social Fund.