Five people living on the streets have died in Badalona this year. According to the Badalona Acull platform, which confirmed the information to ARA, the latest victim was a homeless man. Badalona DailyA 60-year-old man, a resident of Santa Coloma de Gramenet, was found dead on February 15th inside the car where he had been living in the Puigfred neighborhood. According to the platform, which brings together a dozen social organizations in Badalona, ​​the man had been living in a vehicle since December, parked at number 51 Otger Street, in the Puigfred neighborhood, near the Santa Coloma municipal boundary. The only information the city council, led by Mayor Xavier García Albiol, has provided about the case is that he lived in the neighborhood and that there was a restraining order against him from a woman residing in the city. This latest death brings the total to six, including Raúl, Luis, Jordi, and a fourth man who was also living on the streets but has not yet been identified. Just three days ago, the residents of Badalona remembered them in a tribute ceremony in the Plaza de la Vila, where they also took the opportunity to demand the reopening of the municipal shelter. Can Bofí Vell, which closed in April in 2024, leaving the 45 people who were staying there homeless and the city without any emergency residential services. Since then, six homeless people have died in Badalona.

Her legs still tremble when she recounts how she went from being homeless to owning her own apartment. "We were saved by the bell, yes," Anna Pujol (a pseudonym) explains, describing how, after years of being threatened with eviction, pressured to leave quietly, and desperate attempts to stay, she finally succeeded last Wednesday, just 48 hours before the deadline for the eviction notice. Two days earlier, she reached an agreement with the investment fund and signed the preliminary sales agreement to buy the apartment where she and her mother had been renting for twenty years. The process has been very complicated and, emotionally, has been a journey through depression, anxiety, and fear for the mother, who has a disability, and for the daughter, a 24-year-old master's student who just started her first job, which facilitated her obtaining the mortgage.

Despite the positive economic figures and from low unemploymentPoverty has increased by 0.8 percentage points in Catalonia over the past year. This breaks the trend of a modest reduction that began in 2021 thanks to the injection of aid from the social safety net approved in response to the pandemic crisis. According to the latest Living Conditions Survey, published this Thursday by the Statistical Institute of Catalonia (Idescat), 24.8% of the Catalan population is poor and lives with material deprivation. This worsening social situation has not surprised organizations and NGOs, which have been noticing an increase in demand for their services for months. among people who have a jobThe poverty threshold is set at incomes below €13,800 for a single person and €29,100 for two adults and two children, and, in fact, precariousness is particularly affecting children under 16. Child poverty—children living in impoverished families—is a major failing in Catalonia, which ranks among the European regions with the highest number of minors experiencing basic deprivation. In the 0-16 age group, poverty has increased (another year) by 1.3 percentage points, half a point higher than the overall rate, bringing the number of children living in precarious situations to 36.1% of the total. This is the highest percentage of child poverty recorded in the last decade, while a decision is pending on whether to implement a universal childcare benefit so that Spain ceases to be one of the few European countries without a known effective measure.

With winter approaching and the predicted drop in temperatures, homelessness once again confronts us with an uncomfortable reality that we too often prefer to ignore. People living on the streets don't just need blankets or hot food; they need society to stop pointing the finger at them. We persist in simplistic prejudices to ease our consciences, but it's time to educate, to listen before we judge, and to offer a vote of confidence to build more supportive and inclusive communities.

At the macroeconomic level, Spain is booming. In fact, a few months ago, the OECD identified the country as the fastest-growing advanced economy this year, with a projected growth rate of up to 2.6%. But while the big numbers are dazzling, for many children and young people the narrative of economic growth sounds distant, almost unreal. Their reality is quite different: one of precariousness, inaccessible housing, and vanishing opportunities. Since 2007, social exclusion among children and young people has steadily increased, and today it is consolidating into a genuine generational divide. This is the warning issued in the 9th Foessa Report, prepared by Cáritas and presented this Wednesday. The foundation points out that children are emerging as the hardest-hit group: minors represent a third of all severe exclusion, and their poverty rate has risen to 29%, the highest of all age groups and one of the highest in Europe. Young people are one of the other two most affected groups.

"The church is at its limit, but we are where Viqui wanted us to be." When Peio Sánchez, the parish priest of the Santa Ana del Raval parish, said this first sentence, there were still dozens of people in the Barcelona basilica trying to find a small space to stay in. "Today we had to be there," stressed an elderly woman sitting on a folding chair. We had to be there to say goodbye, as she wanted, to Viqui Molins, the street nun that transferred on February 20 after dedicating her life to helping hundreds of people in vulnerable situations.

For Paula Carrasco and her two daughters, aged 6 and 17, covid was a watershed. It was the point at which their lives broke down and they had to resort to welfare aid to be able to pay the rent and fill up the fridge. "I had never needed help from anyone until now but I found I had no income and we had to get by." They are one of many families with underage children whose situation has got dramatically worse. Catholic church charity Caritas warns that this group is the most vulnerable: 40% are now in social exclusion, a percentage that grows to 50% when it comes to single-parent families, like Carrasco's. Míriam Feu, head of analysis at Caritas Barcelona, explains they "have difficulty making ends meet and have no income for unforeseen expenses".