This weekend I passed by the settlement that was evicted today in La Sagrera, where the AVE high-speed train station is being built. It was heartbreaking: single-person shacks built with corrugated iron sheets covered with plastic tarps held down with stones; clothes hanging to dry on lines tied to branches; electrical wires, the remains of bonfires, shopping carts, and trash everywhere, with an abundance of plastic bottles and jugs. The occupants came and went through holes they had easily cut in the wire fence. Frightened neighbors, a feeling of insecurity, and more than one theft. They had been there for months, with Adif, the landowner, doing nothing.

Several explosions and a large column of fire and smoke woke residents of Barcelona's Sant Martí district this morning. A fire in a shantytown at the intersection of Huelva and Bac de Roda streets—next to the La Sagrera construction site—injured two people and burned six of these structures. Firefighters, who received the call at 7:00 a.m., worked to extinguish the blaze with ten crews around 9:00 a.m. They continued to soak the burned area until mid-morning. One of the victims suffered burns, and another a cut finger. According to municipal sources, at least one of the two was taken to Vall d'Hebron Hospital, while the other was treated and released at the scene.

Jesús Sánchez explains that the person who rented them the plot had deceived them all along and has now fled. "We called him, but he didn't answer. He's gone," he says. He and his family lived in the illegal campsite that the police evicted this Monday on rural land in Mataró. According to census data, 85 people were living there, and another 44 were undergoing the registration process. However, more people were reportedly spending the night at this campsite, which Barcelona's first investigating court ordered to be evicted. "Suddenly, we found ourselves on illegal land," another man complains, saying he feels deceived.

Two decades ago, the then Education Minister, Josep Bargalló, stated that Catalan schools only had to "have the prefabricated modules that were necessary", but he also made a very clear warning: "We will never stop having prefabricated classrooms". At that time, the number of barracks in schools and institutes in Catalonia was 643. Since then, the new ministers who have led the ministry, of three different political colours, have been repeating this same message at the beginning of each school year with minor variations.