On October 8th, 2025, the UC Berkeley Institute for the Study of Societal Issues welcomed Guillaume Dumont, Associate Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Ethnography Institute at Emlyon Business School in France. Dumont has written multiple books and is currently focused on exploring people-centered perspectives related to dynamics across legal and illegal markets in Barcelona. His lecture entitled “Narco-Especulació: Drug trafficking, speculative practices and community organizing in Barcelona” was presented both in person for fourteen guests, and virtually, which accommodated an additional twenty guests. Dumont contextualized the term “Narco-Especulació”, which is a framework coined by Barcelona locals explaining the relationships between bank investment funds and drug dealers. This relationship exists and persists today because of speculative practices surrounding private equity funds and a tolerant police presence in the face of extensive Spanish laws around evictions.
Dumont highlighted events like the 2012 economic crisis, which created the unique circumstance that permitted drug distributors to exist in dense and even very touristic areas of Barcelona despite high police presence. After residents were evicted during said economic crisis, both international and domestic equity firms were quick to acquire these properties, transitioning property ownership from local residents to distant or removed entities. With the influx of apartment vacancies came illegal squatters who utilized empty apartments as locations for drug distribution, referred to as “Narcopisos.”
Despite continuous complaints from Barcelona locals, the police remained unable to regulate these newfound Narcopisos, as eviction processes in Spain are extensive. Nardopisos leveraged protective laws surrounding family evictions, and the firms who owned the apartments did not cooperate or grant the police permission to investigate residents. With the complicity of apartment owners in relation to drug dealers being hard to prove, this generated additional discontent and mistrust with local authorities. Given the circumstances of institutional neglect and the increased touristification of the Barcelona area, Dumont coins this phenomenon as the “urban expropriation” of Barcelona locals. Residents have disconnected with their neighborhoods as they cannot take action against Nardopisos, local businesses continue to vanish, and restaurants become increasingly gentrified and cost-prohibitive. This environmental situation has served as a catalyst for collective community action to create change. Collaborative strategies for Barcelonians to combat this nexus of drug trafficking and housing scarcity include creating spaces for public engagement, a public and expansive collection of Narcopisos data, increased media coverage, and the utilization of preventative occupation tactics, such as installing new security systems in vacant apartments.
Dumont closed his presentation by centering on how illegality can be managed and politicized, and how a lack of intervention or continuous passivity from government actors ultimately fosters a sense of lost social control among locals in the face of rich institutions and criminals. The event concluded with an enthusiastic sequence of questions from the audience, which allowed Dumont to expand upon changing drug models and practices, policies that encourage large real estate portfolios, and the unique renter protections in Spain.