He leaves the tent, which by midday must already be an oven inside. “No problems, no police,” he says, looking from side to side. From the dozen tents in this corner of the ronda del Litoral, between L'Hospitalet and Barcelona, no one peeks out when they hear a strange voice. At the door of each one, there are trainers and pool flip-flops that reveal that the owners have preferred to remain oblivious to what is happening outside and avoid problems. They are afraid that making themselves visible will force them to move again. This group has settled in a vacant lot between roads, having come from evictions at the airport, the Ciutadella, and the Zona Franca. “They are looking for the periphery,” illustrate those from the organizations, who point out that they opt to go more unnoticed by the police and also by the neighbors.

Manuel Heredia gets up every day at 5 in the morning to go to work. He washes his face and teeth, ties up his hair, takes the train, and at 6:20 am he enters the company door. Eight hours later, he showers and does the journey in reverse. Until the next day. It's the same routine for so many workers, but Heredia's particularity is that he lives on the street, an exceptionality that is becoming increasingly normalized, social entities warn. The FOESSA report from Cáritas estimates that in Catalonia 1.4 million workers are poor.

It has been more than four years since the death of Munir and Jéssica in the shantytown of Montcada i Reixac. In this time, however, the situation of the settlement has not changed at all and its inhabitants continue to live in poverty between the Besòs river and the BV-5001 road, invisible to the administrations despite the tragedy. That day in January 2022 it was cold, the couple lit a fire to warm themselves and died of asphyxiation inside their makeshift home, leaving three children orphaned. The arrival of a new summer does not improve the neighbors' outlook, as with the rising temperatures they have to seek refuge outside the shack—built with sheet metal or materials not very resistant—when the sun beats down the hardest and makes the air inside unbreathable. This is the case of a man resting in the shade without a shirt. He does not want to give his name, nor have his photograph taken and be interviewed, he is tired of reporting the situation and angry about the lack of help they have received: "They died right next door and everything remains the same; I don't want to talk to you because it will be useless".

The Pope has reserved the two small-format, more intimate events for the second and last day of his visit to Barcelona to meet with vulnerable groups. In the morning, he met with about eighty inmates at the Brians 1 prison, in Sant Esteve Sesrovires, before heading to the monastery of Montserrat. In the afternoon, he chose the modest church of Sant Agustí, in the heart of Barcelona's Raval, on his way to the central event of the blessing of the Sagrada Família's tower of Jesus. It was, therefore, a day marked, on the one hand, by two great symbols of Catalan spirituality and, on the other, by two points where current social problems are felt.

In October 2024, when the Congress approved the ELA law, at the home of the Culleré-Piqué family, a bottle of cava was opened to celebrate that, finally, the sick peopleThe family complains that, while the Generalitat has avoided service cutsthe Catalan law, which complements with a maximum of 4,929.5 euros per monthCompanies charge 18.5 euros per hour of care during the day and 22 euros at night and on weekends, in addition to mileage charges – between 0.26 and 0.32 euros. That is, the estimations of the Department of Social Rights to calculate the aid do not take into account the extra amounts for night and holiday hours nor the travel expenses of the workers that companies do charge. Therefore, the difference is borne by the Culleré-Piqué family. Social Rights assures that, for patients with annual incomes below 53,000 euros, the system covers the total cost of the service. Above this threshold, a co-payment of 5% applies.

There is one year left until the municipal elections and only ten days until the Pope's visit to Barcelona, and the labor conflict with part of the City Council staff is growing. In fact, social workers will maintain their strike for June 9 and 10, coinciding with the pontiff's presence. This Friday, in an extraordinary plenary session requested by the Junts, Comuns, and ERC groups, Jaume Collboni's government has been left alone with Vox against opening a dialogue space with the three minority unions –CGT, Intersindical, and ABACOS, with only 3 out of the 15 members of the negotiation table–, who have called for 30 days of partial stoppages in basic social services, gender-based violence, childhood, libraries, nursery schools, social emergencies, or citizen attention.partial stoppages in basic social services, gender-based violence, childhood, libraries, nursery schools, social emergencies, or citizen attention.

The Government and the Third Sector Table approved this Wednesday the forgiveness of the debt for electricity bills that vulnerable families have accumulated between 2022 and 2025. The measure is part of the expired agreement signed with Endesa in March 2021, and will mean that thousands of families will not have to pay unpaid bills, without risk of being reported. On the eve of the approval of the Generalitat's budgets, Salvador Illa and the president of the Table, Xavier Trabado, have formalized the agreement between both parties to allocate 250 million euros to strengthen social policies, from the fight against energy poverty to the promotion of employment, the fight against homelessness or child poverty.

It has taken four years for the law of the third social sector to see the light of day. The project was dropped due to the call for early elections, and after months of new debates and parliamentary proceedings in this new legislature, the plenary session of the Catalan chamber approved this Wednesday by a large majority a text that, for the first time, officially recognizes the work of the 3,000 non-profit entities that serve more than two million Catalans –a quarter of the population–, the majority of whom are vulnerable groups. The norm was passed with the votes of the PSC, ERC, Comuns, and Junts, the abstention of the PP, Vox, and the CUP, and the opposition of the deputies of Aliança Catalana.

Music could not be missed, and even less so the piano that accompanied him for so many days to bid farewell to Dragomir Atanazov, a man who managed to escape the ugliness and sadness of living on the street and transformed himself when he played the black and white keys. Atanazov, elDrago, was born in 1972 in Bulgaria and died prematurely this April in Barcelona, no longer as a homeless person but in the home of a foster family. In an emotional ceremony at the workshop-store La Troballa, which Arrels Fundació has on Ample street in the Catalan capital, where he had spent so many hours working, six pianists wanted to pay tribute to the street pianist who played at the Hospital Clínic and Sant Pau and left more than one speechless.

The Mossos d'Esquadra have arrested Jonathan Andic, the son of Mango founder Isak Andic, for the death of his father, who died at the age of 71 while hiking in the Salnitre caves on December 14, 2024. Although initially treated as an accident, a few months ago the Mossos began investigating Andic's son, the only person with whom the businessman was hiking that day, for homicide. The Mossos arrested him this morning at his home and took him to the Martorell police station. Around 12:45 PM, he was transferred to the courts in the same city, where he arrived handcuffed. His lawyer, Cristóbal Martell, was already waiting for him there.

One of the fourteen Spanish passengers on the cruise ship MV Hondius isolated at the Gómez Ulla Hospital has provisionally tested positive for hantavirus in the PCR test performed when the group entered this military center in Madrid to undergo quarantine. The other thirteen cruise ship passengers, on the other hand, have tested negative and will undergo a second test within seven days. The positive passenger is a man who, according to the Ministry of Health, is in good health and shows no symptoms. Following protocol, biological samples will be re-analyzed in the coming hours, and if the same result is repeated, he will be transferred to the High-Level Isolation and Treatment Unit (Uatan) of the same hospital, with stricter and more specific conditions for treating infectious diseases. The rest of the passengers will continue in individual rooms. The medical news coincided with the completion of the ship's evacuation operation and the repatriation of all passengers, except for about twenty crew members who have set sail for the port of Rotterdam, in the Netherlands. "Mission accomplished," said the Minister of Health, Mónica García, in a press conference from the port of Granadilla, in Tenerife, where only disinfection of the facilities remains.

Almost the only unknown that remains to be known about the arrival operation of the luxury cruise ship MVHondius on the island of Tenerife is the time it will drop anchor to remain anchored until the Spanish authorities order the disembarkation. The good sea conditions have meant that the ship is making good progress and this Friday it was said that the vessel would arrive on Saturday afternoon and not Sunday morning, as had been planned. Despite this advancement, the night will be allowed to pass before the machinery is started to disembark the 151 people on board, counting 147 passengers and crew and four professionals who boarded in Cape Verde to assist them. For the moment, the toll of the outbreak remains at five confirmed infections, in addition to the three who have died, and the World Health Organization (WHO) is confident that no more passengers will test positive.

None of the cruise passengers still on board At this point, health authorities have three people under surveillance due to the hantavirus outbreak in Spain: the woman with symptoms in Alicante who is considered a suspected case and must remain in isolation, and the two women identified as contacts – and therefore not considered suspected cases –: the woman living in Catalonia and a South African tourist who spent a week in Barcelona but had already returned to her country. Thus, there is only one possible contagion under consideration — that of the woman from Alicante — which will need to be confirmed or ruled out with a microbiology test.

The Generalitat, employers' associations from the social sector, and the CCOO and UGT unions signed an agreement this Wednesday to achieve full salary equalization for the 120,000 professionals working in the fields of geriatric residences, disability, childhood, drug addiction, and mental health. The pact establishes gradual salary increases until 2030, the year in which workers hired by private companies are expected to have the same salary as those under an administration agreement. To achieve this, the Department of Social Rights and Inclusion will establish a new financing system for companies, which links an increase in the public tariff to an effective increase in payrolls.

The cruise ship affected by hantavirus will disembark from here in three or four days in Granadilla de Abona, a secondary port in the southeast of the Canary island of Tenerife, very close to the airport. Here it is expected that all passengers and crew can be evaluated by medical teams, but they will not be able to disembark from the ship. From next Monday they will be repatriated to their countries of origin if they do not present any symptoms compatible with the infection. In the case of the 14 people of Spanish nationality who are on board —including five Catalans—, they will be transferred by an army plane to the Torrejón de Ardoz base, in Madrid, to be admitted to the Gómez Ulloa military hospital, where they will spend their quarantine. The authorities have not yet determined for how long, but they do know that the incubation period for hantavirus is about 45 days. The ship set sail on Wednesday afternoon and Health estimates it will take three days and 12 hours to dock in the Canary Islands if there are no unforeseen events.

Harassment, insults, manipulated photographs to mock, or spying on someone's phone. These are the digital violences perpetrated by Spanish youth, mostly against people of their own age, friends, or work and leisure companions, and also against their partners. A study by FAD Joventut indicates that 26% of those aged between 15 and 29 have been digital aggressors in the last 15 years, with no significant gender differences, but there are differences by age: 32% of adolescents (15-19 years old) report having engaged in cyberviolent behaviors compared to 24% of those aged 20-24 and 20% of the 24-29 age group. The victim's profile is an adolescent belonging to a vulnerable group, such as an immigrant, a member of the LGBTIQ+ community, someone with a disability, or from a socially vulnerable family.

"Now or never." About twenty social and citizen entities are demanding that the reform of the dependency law currently being processed in Congress be accelerated so that it is approved before the end of the legislature, fearing that in the next one, the balance of power in the chamber will shift in a way that makes it impossible to maintain the positive, but "insufficient," spirit that exists now. The associations have gathered under the acronym of the Platform for Autonomy and Dignified Life to demand that the right to care at all life stages and the recognition of caregivers, whether professional or family, be left "outside of political negotiations."

The balance of the first week of the regularization of the 150,000 migrants living and in many cases working in Catalonia is summarized by 12-hour queues at the doors of town halls and social entities to obtain the vulnerability report and by the consequences of having had to improvise at the last minute to adapt to the definitive wording of the approved instruction. "They say we don't need the vulnerability report or the census, but I know people who then don't have their application accepted," says Elida Rojas, a Bolivian with two children to support.

Up to 1,300 euros are being claimed by the Department of Social Rights from a young person with a high degree of dependency who has entered a special employment center and, therefore, should not have continued to receive the fixed economic benefit. But since bureaucracy is not prepared to automate changes, the order for the transfer of aid continues to arrive, accumulating an amount that for the family "is as if it didn't exist", it is not touched. This is one of the examples that explain what the Generalitat calls "undue payments" and which are mainly due to errors or the slowness of the administration; whether, as in the young person's case, due to incompatibilities, a downward revision of a dependency degree, or the death of the beneficiary. Last year alone, the ministry requested the repayment of 10,665 of these debts.

They feel confused, alone, and insecure, wondering if, despite the calls to report the abuser, they haven't made a mistake, given that in courts, at the police station, or at the health center, they encounter little empathy from the professionals who are supposed to protect them. "You question if you did the right thing, if you should have stayed quiet," explains a woman through the anonymous channel opened by theObservatory of Institutional Machista Violence (OVIM) of the State to visualize the mistreatment that public services still inflict on these women. Last year, it received 139 reports, twenty more than in 2024 – the first year of operation – but the promoters admit that there is a high rate of underreporting.