We read in ARA that the former mayor of Barcelona Ada Colau “has reappeared this Monday as a housing activist at the eviction of a vulnerable neighbor in Barcelona”. It seems the Mossos took her away. Reappear: the verb is used for movie stars.
It pains me greatly to see activists at an eviction, because it seems to me that it serves them, but never the person being evicted. When it reaches the point of an eviction, it means that everything that should have been done by the administration has not been done. The eviction is avoided, a hole is covered, a photo is taken. The word vulnerable is tricky. A grandmother who cannot make ends meet and cannot pay the rent is vulnerable, a squatter is vulnerable, a hashish grower is vulnerable, and a man who sublets rooms to compatriots is vulnerable. A landlord who has an apartment rented out and is not getting paid is vulnerable.
Ada Colau goes to an eviction now that she is no longer a politician and can go back to being an activist. She is protesting against the mayor's policy, just as other activists protested against hers, before. The mayor cannot avoid the law. She could not avoid it. What could she have done, by the way, if she could have avoided it, if she had had a magic wand? Forgive the debts of those in arrears? Make everyone pay based on their income? Evict banks and build social housing? Make housing free? Subsidize boarding houses? Build barracks?
She did none of this —and housing was her main slogan— because she could not. Now, from activism, she can ask Jaume Collboni, her former partner, to see if he can do more than she was able to do. But the phrase “Paquita stays” (I use the fictional name for the typical phrase, always in Spanish) is false, because until when does she stay? Until tomorrow? Until the day after tomorrow? Until the photographers leave?
