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.

More than 500 people have gathered since 7 a.m. this Wednesday on Avinguda Vallcarca in Barcelona, ​​​​at the corner of Carrer Farigola, to prevent the first attempt to evict two apartment blocks and a warehouse owned by Barcelona City Council. And for now, they have succeeded.

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.

On the site in the Vallcarca neighborhood where, until last week, dozens of shacks stood, there are now about 300 yellow concrete blocks, of the New Jersey type., which prevent anything else from being installed there. There has been no trace of the shacks (and the people who lived there) since last Thursday, Barcelona City Council decided to speed up the eviction and clean up the entire camp. On Wednesday night, a short circuit in a heater caused a fire in one of the barracks –which left one young man injured– and that accelerated the entire process. So, after many weeks of controversy and back-and-forth, Jaume Collboni's government evicted the twenty people who were still staying overnight, citing security concerns.

Is it possible that something you've been waiting for for more than twenty years can take you by surprise? The answer is yes. At least, that was the prevailing sentiment this Thursday afternoon among the residents of Vallcarca affected by the green boulevard project that Barcelona City Council has reactivated after two decades. The council had announced in the morning that it was beginning therecord to expropriate the four properties on Bolívar Street—also with a facade on Vallcarca Avenue—between Ballester and Agramunt Streets.

Barcelona City Council has taken the first step toward evicting the Vallcarca shack settlement. First Deputy Mayor Laia Bonet explained this Tuesday that the people living in the settlement and those living in three occupied municipal properties nearby have already been notified that they cannot continue living in substandard housing. This is the first step in an administrative eviction process that Bonet admitted will be lengthy and could last "months."

From the outside it looks like a mountain of wood, fabric and scrap metal. But once inside, the prevailing organisation reveals a small community of neighbours, more or less an avenue. Life in the Vallcarca shanty town "is hard". This is admitted by Florina Drosu, who has lived there for years and has opened the doors of the site to receive a team from the ARA and explain how they are organised and how she and the rest of the neighbours live.

Tensions rise in the Vallcarca neighborhood around the settlement of shacks that has been providing shelter for some seventy people for years and which is located on municipal land where an urban development plan is planned to transform the neighbourhood. The Barcelona City Council has judicial authorisation to carry out a "technical inspection" of the settlement and analyse the conditions in which these people live, but the deadline ends this Saturday and so far they have not been able to gain access. The neighbours who live there, with the support of social movements in the neighbourhood, have prevented them from entering on up to three occasions, the last on 11 February: they fear that the inspection will end with an "express eviction" without a residential solution for those affected, a situation that they have been trying to negotiate for years without success.