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.

The story of Juanjo Hernández is the story of the real estate crisis. This 56-year-old resident of Ciudad Meridiana—the poorest neighborhood in Barcelona—has experienced every chapter of the housing drama firsthand: the rising prices of the bubble, buying an apartment at the worst possible time, the outbreak of the housing crisis in 2008, the skyrocketing Euribor that made vulture funds more expensive, and now, the rental crisis. And it's no coincidence, nor is it bad luck. Since the real estate crisis of 2008, this peripheral neighborhood of Barcelona is called by the nickname of Villa Deshaucio.

Outside the construction booth of the Neighbors' Association (AVV) of Ciutat Meridiana a queue of five people has formed. "Is it for the ID card?" asks George V., a young man from Ghana. For four years he has been a resident of this Barcelona neighbourhood, which has the worst welfare indicators in the city. They have come to become members of an organization that acts as a "psychotherapist" for a neighbourhood on which covid has fallen like a dead weight, reflects Filiberto Bravo, a veteran neighbourhood leader who has fought a thousand battles to get basic services for this steep neighbourhood. When Fili - Bravo's pseudonym - laughs, his eyes grow small, but he becomes serious when he explains how the weeks of lockdown in flats of less than 50 square meters and in most cases without balconies and with tiny windows were. A harshness that is still conjugated in the present tense due to the housing problem.