The opposition in Badalona urges Albiol to activate Operation Winter
Social rights organizations and various entities have already relocated 147 people who were evicted from the former B9 building in Badalona.
BarcelonaAround seventy people continue to live in squalid conditions in Badalona, under the C-31 highway and exposed to the effects of the cold, rain, and wind storm, ever since the mayor of Badalona, Xavier García Albiol, evicted them from the building they had occupied for years, the former B9 high school, just before Christmas. This Saturday, the opposition municipal groups—PSC, ERC, En Comú Podem, and Guanyem—urged the mayor to "immediately activate Operation Winter" to try to alleviate the situation of these people. In a joint statement, the opposition accused García Albiol of not having any emergency plan in place and demanded that he reopen the Can Bofí Vell municipal shelter and implement residential solutions "given the critical situation the city is experiencing."
In the text, the groups assert that this situation would have already been resolved "if Can Bofí Vell had all 50 beds open and the parish in the Sant Crist neighborhood had been able to care for another fifteen" people. The opposition also points out that Comuns, PSC, and Guanyem, with the support of ERC, submitted a motion to the plenary session demanding the reactivation of Operation Winter "when the B9 building had not yet been vacated." They also criticize the fact that the city has not had "any stable municipal structure for addressing homelessness" since the closure of Can Bofí Vell in April 2024 and since the City Council withdrew from the Badalona Homelessness Roundtable.
Faced with the inaction of García Albiol's municipal government, the Department of Social Rights and Inclusion of the Generalitat (Catalan government) and social organizations have continued working, and this Saturday they reported that they have already rehoused a total of 147 people since the large-scale police operation on December 17th that evicted the 400 people living in the B9 facility. In the days leading up to Christmas week, accommodation had already been offered to 83 people, and then on December 23rd, 35 people were rehoused; on the 24th, another 20 were rehoused; and between Christmas and Boxing Day, accommodation was found for another 9 people. Sources from the Department of Social Rights explain that the operation remains active, in a new phase of identifying people initially considered vulnerable who have not yet been able to be relocated.
A continued dismantling of resources
Shortly after Xavier García Albiol assumed the mayoralty of Badalona for the third time in June 2023, he established his profile with municipal social policy through an initial decision that sparked outrage among social organizations: the city council refused to apply for ACOL program funding to subsidize employment for fourteen undocumented immigrants. Cáritas, which had helped more than 80 people regularize their immigration status through this project over the past three years, denounced the decision in September of that year. Two years later, Albiol has made the most controversial decision on this issue: the eviction of hundreds of people living in the B9 Institute and others who had occupied the former municipal shelter of Can Bufí Vell, which had been closed for almost two years by the current municipal government. Badalona, with over 225,000 inhabitants, was left without a municipal shelter for the homeless in 2024, leaving 45 people who spent the night or went there for food on the streets. The social organizations that make up the Badalona Homeless Roundtable issued a joint statement rejecting the closure of these facilities and warned that "resources are lacking." At that time, the organizations had 294 places available in housing and 27 in a shelter in the city of Badalona, all of which were occupied. In the autumn of that year, some opposition groups submitted a series of objections to the Badalona municipal budget, including a €500,000 emergency rehousing fund, the construction of an emergency shelter with an investment of €1.2 million, and an additional €1.2 million investment. But the government, with an absolute majority, rejected them.
Budget execution and surplus
Representatives of municipal political groups have repeatedly denounced the fact that the City Council had a surplus of 78 million euros in 2024, the largest amount in the last ten years. "Furthermore, large amounts of public funds are being allocated to unnecessary services and expenses, such as 'nighttime festivities,' or disproportionate ones, such as a Christmas campaign with excessive lights and a metal tree vying to be the tallest in Spain," the text criticizes. For all these reasons, they argue that allocating public funds "to expenses that do not address the city's real problems, [...] instead of using the required internal resources, which would be more efficient from an economic and social standpoint, could constitute the crime of embezzlement." "This government accumulates surpluses year after year; it's not that there's a lack of money, it's that they're incapable of spending it," said Dolors Sabater, leader of Guanyem Badalona, in an extraordinary plenary session in October that ended with the approval of modifications to several tax ordinances.
