Forests, key allies in the fight against climate change due to their ability to absorb carbon dioxide (CO₂), are losing effectiveness in Europe.

"The premises did not meet the conditions of habitability," said Mayor Ada Colau when she arrived this morning at the scene of the fire which took the lives a family of two adults and two small children. And it was not a house, it was a bank office. The situation of substandard housing in which this family was living is neither an isolated case nor a new phenomenon. In Barcelona alone, more than 700 people are living in shanties and abandoned premises or spaces, according to the latest data from the Fundació Arrels, based on the Transparency portal of the Barcelona City Council.

"The neighbours had long been warning that someday a misfortune would happen here and no one did anything. And today it happened... And it's terrible," explained a neighbour at number 20 Plaça Tetuan in Barcelona this Tuesday morning, where a fire early this morning claimed the lives of four members of a family: father, mother and two very young children, aged between one and three. They had been living in a former bank office of Evo Banco for more than a year, and the city social services had been monitoring the children since they were alerted, in 2020, that they were living in these squatted premises in poor conditions. Early this morning, for reasons still unknown, the ground floor caught fire and the family was trapped inside.