World camp

We have people camping in Ceuta wishing to enter and live in a country where there are people camping in protest for fear of being kicked out of the rental apartment where they live. It is the same country where there are thousands of people camping every night on the streets. Or who have had to turn their room into a campsite, into a kind of new vertical shanty town.

It is the same country where the government offers to go halves on buying an apartment for 40-year-olds, where there are vouchers for youth rent, official interest-free loans “for young people” aged 18 to 40 to pay part of the down payment on an apartment. Better that they spend it on social aid than on armaments, of course, but when public money has to patch up all age groups (and we are only talking about housing, we could also mention the number of children who go to school to learn, but also to be able to eat a hot meal) it is evident that the system has stopped working for a great majority.

What was possible with a worker's salary, which was to take out a reasonable mortgage to buy an apartment, has become impossible with the salary devaluation and the madness of real estate prices. It happens in many other countries in the developed world, but for us it has finally exploded, and seeing the scrambling to approve two decrees tomorrow in Congress, the electoral posturing, the angry accusations of being rentiers against people who, in fact, are part of the same group at the base of the social pyramid as the accusers, there is no doubt that we are facing it late and poorly. The conversion of housing into a simple product has ended up turning thousands of people into potential campers. Here, and everywhere.