Social Housing and Dictatorship. Guided Tour with SUT Protagonists

As part of the The City in Dispute programme, the Basque Institute of Architecture revisits a little-known history of self-management and grassroots cooperation during the Franco dictatorship.

Emilio Criado, member of the Friends of the SUT Association, and Itziar Zurriarain, both direct protagonists of this movement, will lead a guided tour of the exhibition, sharing in a dynamic and first-person way their own involvement with the SUT.

Like thousands of university students, both took part in the SUT movement — Servicio Universitario del Trabajo (University Work Service). The SUT helped workers build their own neighbourhoods on Sundays.

Between 1950 and 1969, nearly 14,000 students mobilised through the SUT — Servicio Universitario del Trabajo — in more than 500 work camps across Spain. Every weekend, university students and workers collaborated to build social housing in working-class neighbourhoods.

Through this mechanism, the Franco regime subsidised part of the workers’ housing, while the remaining percentage could be paid not with money, but through physical labour — the so-called prestación personal (“personal contribution”). Future residents built their own homes, and SUT students joined the effort in solidarity.

A story that coexisted, in all its complexity, within the dictatorship’s urban and social project. A unique opportunity to hear this memory first-hand from those who lived it.