Art to protest politics in Spanish town

At some point in early 2012, Pablo Lag stood in front of an abandoned, half-constructed house in the centre of Alicante, Spain, and kicked in the door.

"The space had been under construction for years," he said. "I mean not with people working there. Nobody was looking at it."

Lag, a young art curator who used to work in neighbouring Murcia, was frustrated with what he calls the "very strange [culture] policies" in the region.

The year before, the government of Valencia, the...