Since last Wednesday, if Txema Escorsa, 34 years old and a struggling secondary school teacher, is still in his home, at Sant Agustí street in Vila de Gràcia, it is because that day, very early, an anonymous crowd, shoulder to shoulder, prevented the judicial procession and judicial device from carrying out the task of kicking him out of his home. Everything stopped at street level and via a human wall, and this is called social unionism, civil disobedience, and community defense. The undeniable evidence clarifies, with lights and shorthand, that the eviction was only blocked by the massive mobilization of the people. That is to say, Txema was saved by the popular initiative of the Tenants Union and not by any calm and severe political, judicial, or police decision. And that the president of the Generalitat even sent a tweet of support – although it will take more than a tweet. The battle against the global market is always local and the image showed hundreds of neighbors against a foreign vulture fund located in New York, which violates and breaks current legislation and which is impudently making prohibited colivings for room rentals, to which it already charges per room much more than Txema pays for an entire apartment. Paradoxically, the main representatives of the speculators were, last Wednesday, the judge and the police – that is, the institutional system – who came to accelerate the expulsion of residents. And from here the creature cries. The judicial procession has left in writing that it will try again on April 15th. The people, undoubtedly, will too. The same day that Txema was resisting at his home thanks to active neighborhood solidarity, Barcelona City Council decided to take advantage of it to evict 130 impoverished people from a vacant lot in La Sagrera. Without any prior notice and without offering them any alternative other than to get out and disperse them throughout the city. Everything happened –words and deeds of urban eloquence, in which the name never makes the thing– under the protection of the alleged Pla Endreça and next to, wouldn't you know it, the Pont del Treball Digne, which the expelled do not have in the open. However, the Quart Món entity was there supporting them. These days a municipal campaign supposedly denounces the uncivil "scoundrels". But what is "shameful" is that the shantytown returns to the city –53 settlements with 299 people as of December 2025– and that so "little" is done to reverse it. Or that the little that is done is to drive them away to an even worse place. Scoundrels, indeed. After all, here in Barcelona as in Badalona, we should insist much more that the different management and narratives –the packaging and propaganda– in no case alter the final product: the abandonment of the kick in the backside. The effect ends up being the same, whether with Albiol's aporophobic shouting, or with Collboni's apparently sanitizing neutrality. One and the other confuse the fight against extreme poverty with the fight against the poor. And that's how we are. Thanks to all the entities involved for years in the fight for the eradication of homelessness, from the Fundació Arrels to the Hospital de Campanya of the parish of Santa Anna. A civil network that has been crying out for years for a law of transitional and urgent measures, still in infinite process and pending approval.

The social safety net measures, which were rejected in Congress on Thursday by the PP, Vox, and Junts parties, protected 60,000 vulnerable people across Spain, some 13,000 of them in Catalonia. One of them is Francesca Cervelló. This 63-year-old resident of the Putxet neighborhood in Barcelona has been dreading this day for months. "What will I do now? What will happen to me?" she asks in a conversation with AHORA.

Another defeat for the Spanish government in Congress. The lower house approved a 2.7% increase in pensions this year (only Vox voted against it), but rejected, for the second time, the social safety net decree and the decree promoted by the Minister of Social Rights, Pablo Bustinduy, which would have allowed the Spanish government to limit the prices of goods. Both measures were defeated by the votes of the PP, Vox, and Junts. "Be clear that people will take note [of your decision] and they have long memories," said Bustinduy.

We'll finish this now. immersion in the 23-F which has been going on for days, not without highlighting the irony of fate that it means Tejero died yesterdayPrecisely. Today is the day of reckoning (the final tally). Winners: Pedro Sánchez, who, by declassifying these documents, has steered the political conversation for almost a week and it's worked out brilliantly for him. Winner: Juan Carlos de Borbón, who appears as someone who stopped the coup, with two very large asterisks: they haven't declassified the conversations the king had on the afternoon of the coup with the various captains general of the military regions, and therefore we don't know if he was testing them out; and second, we'll never know if in the days before the king hinted that he would be willing to support what was called "a change of course." Otherwise, nothing new, beyond rubbing our eyes at the fact that a diagram, a schematic that looks like something a primary school student would draw, showing several possible coups, has been kept confidential.

The social safety net decree, which will be voted on in Congress this Thursday, hangs by a thread. In fact, at this point, nothing suggests it will pass, because the Spanish government doesn't have enough votes secured. Junts has stated it will vote against it, or at least that's what the party's spokesperson in Congress, Miriam Nogueras, indicated during Wednesday's question time with the Spanish government. "We will vote no," Nogueras affirmed, criticizing Pedro Sánchez for including the anti-eviction measure in the decree again. "Social safety net yes, squatting no," Nogueras said. Thus, Pedro Sánchez's government is once again headed for another defeat for the package of measures. Government sources are avoiding commenting on this scenario and are simply saying they are waiting for Thursday's vote.

The pressure has had no effect. The PP and Junts have rejected the pension increase and the anti-eviction measures in Congress. Although both parties agreed with the first initiative to update pensions, the fact that it was included in the same decree as the second, which they oppose, led them to vote against both. The criticism they received from the left during Tuesday's plenary session of the Lower House and the pleas from housing groups, who marched to the doors of the Lower House to demand the approval of the legislation, did not change their initial positions, which had already predicted this outcome. the first parliamentary defeat of the Spanish government this 2026. Vox also voted against it. Conversely, the Spanish government has passed the decree creating a single transport pass for the entire country and maintaining public transport subsidies amidst the railway crisis. Juntos voted in favor, and the Popular Party abstained.

The housing situation in Catalonia is facing a painful paradox. While legislation struggles to balance the right to access decent housing with the protection of property rights, the reality of eviction proceedings reveals a growing imbalance, fueled by judicial overcrowding, a shortage of public housing, and an inadequate procedural framework.

Barcelona en Común's ultimatum to Jaume Collboni. The group's president, Janet Sanz, has issued a "final" warning to the mayor of Barcelona: either the municipal government stops the macro eviction of Vallcarca immediately or they won't agree on anything. "We won't even talk about the credit modification, nor about the tax ordinances or the budgets, nor about urban planning," he assured.

Inability to pay rent is the main reason for eviction in Spain. In the first quarter of 2025, a total of 7,334 evictions were recorded, of which seven out of ten were for non-payment of rent. Of these, 28.2% occurred in Catalonia.

The case occurred two academic years ago, and they are still suffering the consequences: "It's about two girls, sisters. They were at home when their family was evicted and they saw the police vans and the judicial procession arrive, enter their house, and evict them. Two city workers took them to school. They arrived at a safe school and were taken to a worker; they didn't arrive at a safe school and were taken to a worker. When they were late, they had no home to return to." Anna Pérez, director of the Jacint Verdaguer School in the Poble-sec neighborhood of Barcelona, recounts this case, still emotional. "There's always a case that makes you jump, that makes you say enough, and for us, this was it," she continues. This year, there are 18 other students at the school in the same situation, in the midst of eviction proceedings.

Seven police vans, tension and confusion until the last moment. Finally, the judicial delegation decided to arrest in extremis the eviction scheduled for this morning at the home of the Juanjo, a historic activist from Ciutat Meridiana, one of the poorest neighborhoods in Barcelona. The Renters' Union had been denouncing for days that it made "no sense" for the owner—the Cerberus fund—to uphold the eviction order because, according to the union, an agreement in principle had already been reached.

On February 13, AP and his wife were evicted from their flat in Cerdanyola. Their neighbours, EV, her husband and their two children, will go through the same ordeal on March 10. They are families with the financial capacity to pay the rent and have a favourable ruling that recognises their right to be the legitimate owners of their flats. However, this ruling was not enforced due to the transfer of ownership of the flats between two companies owned by CaixaBank. Now, despite the litigation opened in Madrid against the transfer, they are on the edge of the street.

After the pandemic hit, the courts were expecting a wave of lawsuits for unfair dismissals and business closures. Yet this is not quite what happened: "There has been an increase in these matters, but not as much we expected," president of Barcelona's Court of Appeal, Antonio Recio, explains. On the other hand, the effects of the economic crisis caused by the pandemic been more noticeable in first instance courts, which have seen an increased volume of lawsuits over non-payment of rents.

Maribel is certain the spiral began with the mortgage crisis. She moved to number 8 Ermengarda Street in Barcelona's Hostafrancs district in 2007. She was working as a chambermaid and decided to buy the flat. Years later, she became unemployed and became one more victim of the real estate bubble. "I earnt €740 and, if I paid the mortgage, I could pay neither utilities nor housing taxes, and it was impossible," she explains to ARA. After years of anguish, he was able to get the debt signed off in exchange for the flat and got social rent thanks to the Catalan housing law 24/2015, which forces large landlords - those who have more than 10 properties - to offer affordable rent to vulnerable people before evicting them.

Charities and campaigners fear that after October 31, which is when the anti-eviction moratorium approved by the Spanish government during the pandemic expires, there could be a real avalanche of evictions in Catalonia. They expect at many as 26,000, almost double the 15,000 recorded in 2013, the highest ever. In addition, after the Constitutional Court overturned the Catalan housing law, it is estimated that there are about 3,200 vulnerable families who have not been able to renew their social housing rental, and who may now therefore become homeless. Everything suggests, then, that by mid-autumn there will be a major housing crisis in Catalonia, and that to avoid it, or at least mitigate its effects as much as possible, work must be carried out immediately.

First half of the year and Catalonia has already accumulated more than 3,100 foreclosures. This is the name given to the proceedings that banks in particular initiate when the person to whom they have lent money falls into arrears, among other possible defaults, and more than 50% of these have been claims linked to natural persons. These types of procedures, which may or may not end in eviction, have tripled between April and June this year compared to last year and are more than twice as high as in 2019, when the pandemic did not alter the statistics yet.

"They're evicting you next Tuesday", the court-appointed lawyer told her. It was Friday, May 21. Ahead, Sara Sherem (66 years old) had three days, two of which were holidays (Monday was a day off in Barcelona), to pack up an entire flat and find an alternative. Behind, fourteen years paying rent for the same flat on Gran Via in Barcelona, although only two with a contract. She had never imagined herself in this situation. Because of the pandemic and kidney cancer, she had had to close her business on Consell de Cent with Muntaner street. It was a cosmetics shop that she had opened in February 2020 with great enthusiasm, thanks to a loan from a bank. She had been working for years in the sector and considered it was time to go freelance. But everything went wrong. A month after opening the shop, the pandemic closed everyone at home and five months, and later she found out she had a tumour between her bronchial tubes and lungs. The two unforeseen events put her out of business. She was able to negotiate a discount with the shop premises, but she had no luck with the flat. "No money was coming in for me... It was just going out", she explains. She stopped paying rent on the flat for five months, but there was enough to start the eviction process. "When the flat passed from the mother to the son, two years ago, he asked me to regularise it and so we did", recalls Sara. She was paying 700 euros a month. When unforeseen circumstances arose, she tried to negotiate a reduction, but it was not possible. Sara asked the social services and the Municipal Housing Board for help, but there are no places for her for two years. At best, a pension where to stay and a place to temporarily leave her furniture.

The organisations for the right to housing have sent a clear message to Pere Aragonès's new Government, just twelve hours after the inauguration of the republican as president of the Generalitat and in the middle of the debate about the role of the Mossos d'Esquadra in this type of actions. Early this morning, housing activists have occupied Republican Left of Catalonia's (ERC) headquarters to protest against an eviction in the Bloc Llavors, a well-known building on Carrer Lleida, in Poble-sec district in Barcelona.

Graffiti with writings such as "Either with us or against us", and broken glass in five Social Service centres of Barcelona, have finally exhausted the patience of the council's social service workers, especially because they accuse Ada Colau's government of not having shown them political support when some movements in defence of the right to housing put them at the centre of the protests because of their presence in the evictions. Today they have met in assembly, with representation from all the unions, and have agreed that on 20 April, coinciding with the celebration of the municipal commission of social rights, they will concentrate in the Plaça de Sant Miquel to make their complaints heard.