Under a bridge

Under the C-31 bridge, between Badalona and Sant Adrià de Besòs, all the realities of the world have converged, along with some of the miseries of this country. We find great universal classics: the second-to-last to arrive against the last, that is, the poor against the very poor, workers with precarious economies against those who aspire to one day have precarious jobs with papers, in a situation that amounts to an unexpected (and bitter) twist on what was once called class struggle. All of this is fueled by the deliberate conflation of poverty and crime, and the gospel of hate according to TikTok, disguised as concern for security.

It's clear that the management of undocumented immigrants not only doesn't win votes, but actually gains them. Because the eviction of the B9 not only didn't take any administration by surprise, but everyone knew it was coming, and when it did, everyone knew the day and time. And no administration has been good enough to spare us the collective shame of one group of people blocking aid to another. We compare the (lack of) resources deployed in Badalona with the response organized with a chain of command, uniformed rigor, and appearances on every news broadcast when there's a fire or a flood. The anti-immigration rhetoric has resonated so well in our economically precarious and socially fearful society that we haven't heard the President of the Generalitat call for action, first, and then collective reflection, on the serpent's egg that a society lays when it gives in to its most primal impulses. To say that the Catalan government has accompanied this eviction "with values" has been the icing on the cake of a lamentable botch job.