Elizabeth Nash | Madrid | December 16

The Independent - Squatters in Barcelona evicted from a disused factory have mounted a spectacular naked counter attack against the city's mayor while he was addressing a public meeting.

The protesters stripped off their clothes and invaded the platform as Jordi Hereu was presenting an ambitious new cultural policy for the Catalan capital. They seized the microphone and, stark naked, told the public: "The city hall has stripped us bare; but culture will not be evicted."

This latest riposte in an escalating conflict between city authorities and the squatters movement followed the expulsion on Wednesday of a high-profile artists' collective from an abandoned factory they had occupied for two weeks.

The hundreds of evicted people shouted, waved banners and distributed leaflets outside Thursday night's meeting in the heart of Barcelona, calling for a mass demonstration today. Masked figures re-enacted their eviction from the Can Ricart factory, while police vans stood by.

Barcelona, a magnet for style tourists and weekend revellers, has become the squatter capital of Europe. More than 100 squats of empty buildings have been evicted so far this year, but at least 300 remain. One local newspaper last week published a map of the city highlighting the best known.

Squatters, or okupas, celebrate an alternative, anarchistic lifestyle but they are highly organised. They also enjoy a groundswell of public sympathy, which makes it difficult for authorities to wade in with heavy-handed police action.

Barcelona suffers an acute housing crisis. The UN's housing spokesman, Miloon Kothari, travelled to the city earlier this month and condemned Spain's housing shortage as one of the worst in the world. He visited the Can Ricart squat to pledge his support. Spain's Housing Minister, Maria Antonia Trujillo, even acknowledged the "okupa movement as an alternative lifestyle, widely adopted throughout the world".