This Friday, the Mossos d'Esquadra carried out the eviction of eight families from a building in the La Salut neighborhood of Badalona declared in ruins. With the street cordoned off by the Urban Police and the Mossos d'Esquadra riot police, the atmosphere has been heating up since before nine in the morning, and above all, since the neighborhood families have dropped their children off at school. and many mothers have joined the protest. Two hundred neighbors have gathered in solidarity with families who until November paid rent (some with an envelope, others by transfer) for apartments in deplorable conditions. “When they finish here, when they stop by my house or anyone in the neighborhood, we are all the same,” cried Kaoutar Rhim in reference to the critical substandard housing situation that La Salut is experiencing. The evicted families have been taken back to City Hall where they will be provided with accommodation until Monday. Mayor Xavier García Albiol, who accuses the families of squatters and criminals, has already made it clear that, beyond three nights, it will not offer them a housing alternative.
Given the criticism from some opposition parties and opinion leaders for not providing housing to the squatters who are going to be evicted next Friday in #Badalonahere are the reasons. pic.twitter.com/TkbRDIrGzV
— Xavier García Albiol (@Albiol_XG) December 13, 2023
Among those gathered were also activists from the Badalona Housing Union and opposition councilors in the City Council (from Guanyem, the Commons and ERC, who were booed by the presence of the regional police). Among the cries they have chanted, the most frequent, “Get out of Albiol, from our neighborhoods!”, dedicated to the mayor, who during this week has supported the eviction in videos posted on social networks and has assured that the families are criminals and They create problems of coexistence, something that belies the environment of the neighborhood. Albiol swept the last elections and won in all the city's polling stations, except two.
This Friday's eviction, in which there have been moments of tension, anxiety attacks from several women and a small police charge, summarizes the socioeconomic indicators of the neighborhood: poor families, migrants, substandard housing, expired rents but that continue to be paid informal… and a dilapidated building like so many in the area. And a compelling reason to evict them, the building is falling apart, but without any administration having an alternative for people who, as they repeat, have nowhere to go. The social services even suggest that they return to Morocco, as explained on Monday by the couple formed by Mohamed Bakali and his wife, Lamyna, who have raised four children in the neighborhood and until now had never gone to ask the administration for help. .
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Once the eviction was carried out, for which the Generalitat firefighters have also been called, the families have been directed to the City Hall, but out of sight of the gathering: from the wide police cordon, they have been made to leave at the opposite point to the concentration . From the Sant Roc Som Badalona platform, which raised the alert about this case, Carles Sagués, regretted the outcome: “This eviction is a failure of society that allows children and sick people to be kicked out of their homes without alternatives. [en el edificio viven varias personas con enfermedades o bajas laborales por problemas graves de salud]”. “As of Monday, no one knows where they will be able to live. And meanwhile, it is very serious that a mayor is capable of lying, he is a vote-counting machine and he must make calculations and he will do well.” The building has been boarded up without its neighbors being able to remove the furniture and store it in a storage room, as happens in other cases.
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