was to hold a conference to raise awareness around climate change. Can Masdeu became famous in April 2002, when over 100 national police came to evict 11 squatters. Using passive resistance over three days the squatters were able to hold off the police's efforts at forced removal. The squatters used a number of techniques to retain control of the space including, significantly, locking themselves to various precarious perches outside the building. This created a situation in which the police risked serious injury to themselves or to squatters in attempting to remove them. Some dangling occupiers locked themselves to the building, others balanced on a long seesaw, from which no single occupant could be removed without dropping the other. Many were suspended outside the building on frames and even a bathtub was used. The police changed their initial strategy of forced removal with one of waiting for the squatters to get thirsty and hungry and come down. They waited for three days with growing local support and media attention. Hundreds of spectators came to see the occupation, many of them chanted slogans, and stopped traffic on the local highway. A Dutch solidarity organization organized an occupation of the Spanish Embassy in the Netherlands. After three days, the Barcelona judge overseeing the case ordered the police to withdraw. The judge's ruling specified that human rights and safety are more important than property rights. There have been both civil and criminal cases brought against the occupants of Can Masdeu since 2002. Most of these cases have been lost by the community, but it continues to occupy the site, in part because the hospital that owns the facility does not have the financial capacity to renovate the structure. Further complicating the hospital's plans to provide a suitable reason for improving the Can Masdeu site is the fact that immediately next to it there is another larger abandoned institutional building, which could more easily be used than the more dilapidated older facility. Local relations Relations with the surrounding local population have been a focus of the efforts of the residents of Can Masdeu. Immediately after the occupation, the community encouraged local gardeners to come plant on their gardens on the grounds. About a dozen people at first, mostly older women responded to the offer and began planting mostly produce and some flowers. The community hosts monthly or bi-monthly potlucks with local gardeners and there are