The black ball

“There are many ways to kill”

Bertolt Brecht

The death of Olga, an evicted neighbor from 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 and a bit, 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 regarding housing, whoever was governing and with the pertinent nuances. But it all causes fear and leaves us hollowed out, when time never passes in vain. In 2010, the social housing stock 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 social housing units will be lost. And that explains so many things; too many things, perhaps; or maybe all at once.However, among the things that have indeed mutated – and for the worse – I fear the most savage one is revealing how the legitimation of cruelty, the apology for social sadism, indifference to 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 the most screwed-over 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 – wanted to give an unsolicited opinion on Olga's death, attempting to decouple the eviction from the suicide and labeling the informational link as "journalistic irresponsibility." I will spare myself from delving into the high doses of malicious insensitivity, but it had been a long time since I had seen someone so misinformed talking about misinformation and informing us so punctually of their brutal misinformation. The person who said it is the vice president of a newborn 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 most are not the voters of Vox, PP, and AC and, faced with all the dead ends and difficulties, they believe this is a civil war of everyone against everyone. On the other bank are those who know that, faced with 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 kicked out of the house in Santa Eulàlia where she had been renting for 20 years. She was evicted 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 today-unbreathable seconds 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 being unable to assume 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 overdue a truth commission: a report on the assessment of the suffering and victims of real estate violence.The case of Maricarmen –of so many like her– who has taken sudden flight filling squares and streets reminds us, as a bonus, of an evident reality. Those who attack her under the argument that she is a retired civil servant and wants to live in 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 back then was already receiving gifts from the democratic Saudi tyranny. The swindle left us with a hole of more than 50 billion public euros. Once bailed out, the Spanish banking sector has accumulated, from then until today, 285.716 billion euros in net profits. Is there really no one in the room, not a single minimal social democrat, or a sensible Christian democrat, to tell them to return what was 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 is when it is most necessary to urgently change the rules of the game, against the law of the funnel that grips us. Because as long as this does not happen, the systemic black balls will be the same 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 trouble lies: they have had eight years to do it and they could have done it exactly eight years ago. In between, those who have not moved from their place in these fifteen years –we have– are the squares. But they are still there. A demonstration has been called in L'Hospitalet on Saturday at 7 in the evening. In memory of Olga –mother, friend, neighbor, companion. Not one more death, not one life less. So simple. So complicated as it seems. 15 years and 10 months lay it bare.