"A person living on the street in Barcelona is exposed all day, surrounded by people, but no one sees them. It is the peak of loneliness," explains Núria Martínez, director of the Hort de la Vila center for homeless people, in the Sarrià neighborhood. In Catalonia, there have never been as many people sleeping on the streets as there are now: according to the Government, there are about 8,000, more than half of whom are in the country's capital. Working but being unable to pay rent and having to sleep outdoors is a growing reality, as the increase in precariousness means that there are more and more people who cannot even afford to pay for a room despite earning a salary. With this scenario, it is becoming increasingly complex to ensure they reintegrate socially and regain their autonomy, and experts warn that networks of affection and support are needed to allow them to break free from the unwanted loneliness they suffer, in addition to ending the lack of accessible housing and bureaucratic obstacles.

As a child, Mohammed Fadily met thousands of children like him, minors living in shelters after having crossed the border illegally to achieve a better life in Europe. Only about twenty of them made it. "Most have died sleeping on the street, are in prison, or have returned to Morocco." When he arrived by boat he was fifteen years old and, although some of his cousins were already living in Spain, none of them gave him a hand when he asked them for help. He did not speak Catalan or Spanish and the few familiar faces turned their backs on him. His family was miles away, he would not be able to visit them until he reached the age of majority. He was transferred from one center to another without being informed of anything. The only certainty he had was that he did not know anyone.

The Minister of Inclusion, Social Security and Migration, Elma Saiz, explained this Tuesday that the Spanish government has registered 3,019 unaccompanied minors in Ceuta since the mass entry on July 30 and 31. After the Council of Ministers, the spokesperson for Pedro Sánchez's executive also specified that these 3,000 children are "registered and cared for," meaning they are in spaces enabled for minors and, therefore, separated from adults. Of these, 89 have been relocated to the Peninsula in application of the right to family reunification – with direct relatives or extended family –, and 173 more have been relocated to different autonomous communities in accordance with Article 35 of the Immigration Law.

It has been just over two months since Raúl Moreno (Barcelona, 1978) has been at the head of the Department of Social Rights. ARA interviews him for the first time since he took office as minister at the Ramon Berenguer nursing home, in Santa Coloma de Gramenet.

The housing crisis continues to prey on the most vulnerable. Since this morning, Natalia and her children, a family that has lived in the center of Barcelona for the last few years, have no home. She is a victim of gender-based violence, receives the minimum vital income (IMV), and has two children aged 14 and 3 in her care. Furthermore, both her eldest child and she have serious mental health problems. She has proven vulnerability, but the new mechanisms intended to prevent the eviction of people like them have not protected them because, on the other side of the story, there is also a case of vulnerability. The owner is an elderly woman, already retired, who pays the mortgage on the apartment where she lives and could also end up on the street if she continues not to collect the rent. Although Natalia has requested it on several occasions, no alternative has been offered to her beyond being able to spend the night in a shelter: in Barcelona, there are not enough resources available for the current emergency situation.

After half a thousand people spent twelve hours trying to stop it, the mass eviction at number 74 Carrer Llenguadoc, in the Sant Andreu district, will finally not take place. The Barcelona City Council has announced that it has reached an agreement in principle with the owner of the building to purchase it. The eviction affected about fifty people and was scheduled to be carried out at 8 a.m., but it was not until 2:30 p.m. that the Mossos d'Esquadra arrived at the building to carry it out. When it seemed that it would go ahead, at 4:30 p.m., the situation returned to the initial point. The Barcelona City Council and the Generalitat de Catalunya had assured that they were working to stop the operation, while the group of people gathered kept increasing to exert pressure.

Outbreak of tension at the end of the demonstration in defense of housing in the center of Barcelona. After a couple of hours of peaceful protests, the Mossos d'Esquadra charged against a large group of protesters – mostly made up of young people – who lit bonfires at the intersection of Gran Via and Passeig de Gràcia and threw stones, bottles, pyrotechnics, and street furniture at the officers. The operation, which featured a strong deployment of vans and Brimo agents, ended after midnight. The police carried out several identifications and arrested at least 13 people for public disorder, one of whom is a minor. Of all those arrested, eleven were brought before a judge this Tuesday morning and have already been released at the disposal of the courts whenever they are required. The minor was released at night.

The violent storm that has hit a good part of Catalonia with force this weekend has left a toll of two fatalities, one missing young man and more than 200 rescues of trapped people, in addition to numerous material damages and many disruptions to the country's mobility. About twenty counties have been on maximum alert and the Government has restricted mobility and activities to minimize risks. Even so, two men have died and another remains missing; they have been searching for him all day, but they have not been successful and the search operation will continue this Monday at daylight. It is a young man from Pineda de Mar who allegedly approached to look at the stream, slipped and was dragged by the water, which was coming down with force spurred by the torrential rains.

The worst part of the severe storm this Sunday was borne by the Maresme, the Vallès Oriental and the south of the Costa Brava. The heavy storms that discharged with force in Barcelona and the metropolitan area on Saturday moved up along the Girona coastline from south to north, with records exceeding 150 liters in many parts of the Empordà, and have left two fatalities and a young person missing in Pineda de Mar. Several towns spent the morning with flooded streets, road closures and damage caused by overflowing rivers and streams that cross urbanized areas before flowing into the sea.

Despite the political and social repercussions of the two housing decrees struck down last Friday in the Congress of Deputies, with elections on the horizon and dozens of people camping in city centers across the country such as Madrid and Barcelona, the housing emergency does not stop. This Monday will begin a new week of evictions without the protection for tenants that the decrees provided, which were promoted in a rush due to pressure from citizens and unions following the eviction of Maricarmen Abascal, a resident of Madrid nearly 90 years old. She, finally, will be able to return home after reaching an agreement with the investment fund that owns the apartment from which she was expelled, but there are still hundreds of people who continue to have no alternative and who face a possible eviction in the coming days. As ARA has learned, in Barcelona alone, the city where the most evictions are carried out in Catalonia, there are more than 90 scheduled for this week.

Catalonia is experiencing an exceptional weekend due to a severe storm that has forced the paralysis of a large part of the country. From eight o'clock on Saturday evening until two o'clock on Sunday afternoon, mobility and many of the planned activities have been restricted in about twenty counties due to the threat of a 'medicane', a Mediterranean mini-hurricane that can be very violent and which will become more frequent due to the climate crisis. Torrential rains and strong winds have forced the activation of maximum alert on the coast and pre-coast of Barcelona, Tarragona, and Girona, as well as in the counties of Osona and Moianès, where flooding has occurred and there have been people who have been trapped and unable to return home. Sants station will be open all night and people who need to will be allowed to stay there to sleep.

Going shopping, climbing stairs, or even walking were unthinkable activities for Ramon Centelles two years ago. His heart was functioning so poorly that the most mundane tasks were unattainable; he barely left the house and was often hospitalized due to the advanced state of the heart failure he suffered from. Everything changed, however, in December 2024, when he was implanted with a type of artificial heart called left ventricular assist device, which compensates for the organ's malfunction and allows patients like Ramon to regain their autonomy. "Before, I had no life," explains this 50-year-old man to ARA, who is back to living a normal life while waiting for a definitive heart transplant.

Subsidies to incorporate Catalan into video games, a national pact against hate speech, and limiting the use of generative artificial intelligence tools in public services and facilities for children up to 14 years old. These are some of the 67 measures that the Government wants to deploy in the coming years to combat the inappropriate use of digital technologies among children and adolescents and ensure their digital well-being. Among the different actions, the Catalan executive plans to implement screening in primary care to detect addiction risks for children up to 15 years old and recommend a digital plan to families.

The streets are also applying pressure just hours before Pedro Sánchez's government brings the new housing decree-law to the Council of Ministers. Also in Barcelona, where this Monday the Spanish President, Pedro Sánchez, held various events and ended the day at the Palau de Congressos de Catalunya at the awards ceremony for La Vanguardia. 2,000 people according to the Guàrdia Urbana and 20,000 according to the organizers gathered on Avinguda Diagonal to demand that the new decree include, among other things, the indefinite extension of rental contracts and the suspension of evictions.

Choosing between the multitude of similar products offered by a supermarket has become almost an escape room. The options for basic foods such as bread or milk have multiplied, the range is increasingly wide, and deciding can sometimes be complicated. A good way to tip the scales one way or the other is to look at the labels of different products, compare them, and choose the one that best fits each person's nutritional needs. However, interpreting them is not always easy, as processed foods include a long list of ingredients, some of which are additives associated with a number or a technical name, and it is complicated to separate the wheat from the chaff. ARA has consulted various experts in nutrition and endocrinology to create an easy guide that allows understanding food labels and leaving the supermarket with the conviction of having chosen the best option.

The eviction of Maricarmen, an 87-year-old neighbor from Madrid who uses a wheelchair, has been the catalyst for a wave of protests across the country. Hundreds of people have taken to the streets in eleven cities to show their unrest and fed-up attitude regarding the lack of housing policies that protect cases like this woman's. In Barcelona, about 1,200 people, according to data from the Guàrdia Urbana, gathered in front of the Spanish government delegation to demand urgent solutions and send a message of solidarity to Maricarmen: "You are not alone!".

One of the Government's pending tasks regarding social services was to update the budget allocated to municipalities and county councils for the care of people in situations of social vulnerability, dependency, and poverty, which had not been renewed since 2025. With these funds, the local level finances the care for children and adolescents and people experiencing homelessness, as well as the salaries of workers who provide home care, to name a few examples. This Wednesday, the President of the Generalitat, Salvador Illa, signed a new agreement for the 2027-2030 period that plans to allocate more than 2 billion euros and incorporate more than 1,000 new professionals into local social services over the next four years.

This Monday, Sílvia Sanz, a resident of Barcelona's Gràcia neighborhood who had lived right in front of the Fructuós Gelabert School for 13 years, was evicted. She moved in in 2013 with her partner, who was officially on the lease, and when they broke up, he left Barcelona and she stayed in the apartment. Since then, she has been in a state of total administrative helplessness and without access to certain public housing-related benefits because she was unable to get on the contract despite having requested it on numerous occasions. "It's as if I didn't exist," she explains wearily to ARA. This Monday, a large police force executed the eviction order despite Sílvia's willingness to reach an agreement for a negotiated departure.

Changing the priority with which about sixty patients were to be operated on, without informing them or the doctors who had determined the maximum deadlines for entering the operating room, with the aim of doctoring the waiting lists. This is what, allegedly, has happened at the Ramón y Cajal Hospital in Madrid. Faced with these facts, the Minister of Health, Mónica García, asked the Community of Madrid to clarify the "apparent alteration of the waiting list data" and demanded guarantees in the control and veracity of the records. The news has set off alarm bells: Could there be more centers modifying the number of people pending an intervention, bearing in mind that for years they have been one of the great challenges of the health system? Could it happen in Catalonia?

The journalist from Ceuta, Carmela Ríos, is an expert in social media and disinformation. Since the last weekend of July, she has been following with concern the unprecedented crisis that the autonomous city is experiencing, as well as the treatment it is receiving on social media, which has played a decisive role in the massive entry of people from Morocco.