The black ball

“There are many ways to kill”

Bertolt Brecht

The death of Olga, an evicted resident of L'Hospitalet de Llobregat who committed suicide on September 7th, has brought me suddenly, head-on and in tears, back to November 2010. Almost automatically, like a sudden spring of memory. On November 11th of that year, Miguel committed suicide, also in L'Hospitalet, shortly before being evicted. So far and yet so close, between the houses where Olga and Miguel lived there is only a kilometer or so, fifteen minutes on foot and 15 years and 10 months of distance. Connect the dots, because in between there are thousands of evicted families –400,000 in the Catalan Countries–. Even if only descriptively, politically geolocated, it must be added that in November 2010 Catalonia was governed by a formal left-wing tripartite. Today, an informal tripartite. In between, everything has happened and everyone has passed through, here –Mas, Puigdemont, Torra, Aragonès, Illa– and there –from Rajoy to Sánchez–. I say this because between both deaths, what has not changed one bit is the immobilism in housing matters, whoever was governing and with the relevant nuances. But everything is terrifying and leaves us hollowed out, when time never passes in vain. In 2010, the stock of protected social housing in Catalonia did not reach 2%, well below the European average of 15%. In 2026 we are still there: 1.7%. At the tail end of the EU and on the podium of daily evictions. 15 little years and nothing has happened here. Or perhaps it has. Rearrange the chairs: between now and 2040, in the Barcelona area alone, 50,000 protected housing apartments will be lost. And that explains so many things; too many things, perhaps; or maybe all at once.However, of the things that have indeed changed –and for the worse– I fear that the most savage is to reveal how the legitimization of cruelty, the apology for social sadism, the indifference towards the suffering of others, and the aporophobia that so criminalizes poverty have grown exponentially. A growth that also takes a demoscopic and electoral form, with the rise of the extreme rights that condense all their courage into the manifest cowardice of always blaming those who are most screwed for everything. White bullets for black balls. There are those who even –without knowing any detail of the case, as if they were at a bar counter– have wanted to opine gratuitously about Olga's death, pretending to decouple the eviction from the suicide and describing the informative link as "journalistic irresponsibility". I will spare myself from delving into the high doses of mean-spirited insensitivity, but it had been a long time since I saw someone so misinformed talking about misinformation and informing us so punctually of their brutal misinformation. The person who said this is the vice-president of a newly born and singular Federation of Neighbors presided over by hotelier Joan Gaspart. All of this ties in with one of the most symptomatic data points from the latest CEO, where response and voting orientation are crossed when asked "if one can almost always trust people". 41% defend it. Those who defend it the most are not the voters of Vox, PP, and AC and, in the face of all the dead ends and difficulties, they believe this is a civil war of all against all. On the other side, there are those who know that, in the face of all the difficulties and the same dead ends, there is nothing more than the democratic possibility of life in common.

So far, so near, and as many forgotten things as forgotten people, many things have changed and some remain undaunted. Miguel's apartment was an empty public housing unit owned by the public company Adigsa. Shortly before hanging himself in a park in Gornal, he had asked for help from overwhelmed social services, begging them to postpone his eviction for a month. In Olga's case, she was thrown out of the house in Santa Eulàlia where she had lived as a tenant for 20 years. They evicted her last April, in an operation driven by the vulture fund Cerberus. Olga's case is also heartbreaking because she appeared before Parliament—she was granted two minutes—where in one hundred and twenty seconds that are now unbreathable, she said it all. But the drip-feed of the black chronicle of the real estate business is not just Miguel from 2010 and Olga from 2026. In June 2025, a 73-year-old man threw himself into the void from a rooftop in El Raval after being evicted. On July 1, 2024, two sisters committed suicide in Sant Andreu for not being able to take on a debt of 9,000 euros. Just a week earlier, in Sabadell, Àlex, 70, threw himself off a hill after being expelled from the house where he had lived for 30 years. This country has long been overdue for a truth commission: a report evaluating the suffering and victims of real estate violence.The case of Maricarmen –of so many like her– who has suddenly taken flight, filling squares and streets, reminds us, as a bonus, of an obvious reality. Those who attack her with the argument that she is a retired civil servant and wants to live in the Retiro forget the main point. That the displacement of the real estate tsunami began with the weakest but will catch everyone if it is not stopped, because it tears everything apart –country, neighborhoods, blocks, apartments, or rooms. Memory also displaces, dislocates, and locates. 17 years ago we were told that the bank bailout was urgent, started by a José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero who was already receiving gifts from the democratic Saudi tyranny. The swindle left us with a hole of more than 50,000 million public euros. Once bailed out, the Spanish banking sector has accumulated, from then until today, 285,716 million euros in net profits. Is there really no social democrat with minimum standards in the room, or a sensible Christian democrat, to tell them to return what they borrowed? Let them return it, of course, with late payment interest as they always do. None? Not a single one? I suppose that when the necessary is impossible, that is when it is most necessary to urgently change the rules of the game, against the law of the funnel that constrains us. Because as long as this does not happen, the systemic black balls will be the same ones as always –yesterday, today, tomorrow. They say that this Tuesday –eight years after the current Spanish government took power– perhaps an urgent decree-law will be presented for an urgency that has lasted since 2009. And that is where the problem lies: they have had eight years to do it and they could have done it exactly eight years ago. In the meantime, those who have not moved from their place in these fifteen years –unlike us– are the squares. But they are still there. A demonstration has been called in L'Hospitalet this Saturday at 7 in the evening. In memory of Olga –mother, friend, neighbor, companion. Not one more death, not one less life. So simple. So complicated as it seems. 15 years and 10 months strip it bare.