The death of Olga, an evicted resident of L'Hospitalet de Llobregat who committed suicide on September 7th, has brought me suddenly, head-on and in tears, back to November 2010. Almost automatically, like a sudden spring of memory. On November 11th of that year, Miguel committed suicide, also in L'Hospitalet, shortly before being evicted. So far and yet so close, between the houses where Olga and Miguel lived there is only a kilometer or so, fifteen minutes on foot and 15 years and 10 months of distance. Connect the dots, because in between there are thousands of evicted families –400,000 in the Catalan Countries–. Even if only descriptively, politically geolocated, it must be added that in November 2010 Catalonia was governed by a formal left-wing tripartite. Today, an informal tripartite. In between, everything has happened and everyone has passed through, here –Mas, Puigdemont, Torra, Aragonès, Illa– and there –from Rajoy to Sánchez–. I say this because between both deaths, what has not changed one bit is the immobilism in housing matters, whoever was governing and with the relevant nuances. But everything is terrifying and leaves us hollowed out, when time never passes in vain. In 2010, the stock of protected social housing in Catalonia did not reach 2%, well below the European average of 15%. In 2026 we are still there: 1.7%. At the tail end of the EU and on the podium of daily evictions. 15 little years and nothing has happened here. Or perhaps it has. Rearrange the chairs: between now and 2040, in the Barcelona area alone, 50,000 protected housing apartments will be lost. And that explains so many things; too many things, perhaps; or maybe all at once.However, of the things that have indeed changed –and for the worse– I fear that the most savage is to reveal how the legitimization of cruelty, the apology for social sadism, the indifference towards the suffering of others, and the aporophobia that so criminalizes poverty have grown exponentially. A growth that also takes a demoscopic and electoral form, with the rise of the extreme rights that condense all their courage into the manifest cowardice of always blaming those who are most screwed for everything. White bullets for black balls. There are those who even –without knowing any detail of the case, as if they were at a bar counter– have wanted to opine gratuitously about Olga's death, pretending to decouple the eviction from the suicide and describing the informative link as "journalistic irresponsibility". I will spare myself from delving into the high doses of mean-spirited insensitivity, but it had been a long time since I saw someone so misinformed talking about misinformation and informing us so punctually of their brutal misinformation. The person who said this is the vice-president of a newly born and singular Federation of Neighbors presided over by hotelier Joan Gaspart. All of this ties in with one of the most symptomatic data points from the latest CEO, where response and voting orientation are crossed when asked "if one can almost always trust people". 41% defend it. Those who defend it the most are not the voters of Vox, PP, and AC and, in the face of all the dead ends and difficulties, they believe this is a civil war of all against all. On the other side, there are those who know that, in the face of all the difficulties and the same dead ends, there is nothing more than the democratic possibility of life in common.

The interests of the far right and big business often go hand in hand. Lowering taxes, raising corporate profits, privatizing pensions, and ultimately shrinking the state are part of their DNA. But sometimes these interests clash, especially when protectionist measures are involved. It is within this context that the latest major strategy of the far right internationally must be understood: making housing affordable, one of the population's main problems. US President Donald Trump is paving the way with interventionist measures that declare war on big investors. The most striking: the announced ban on the purchase of single-family homes to large corporations as a method to achieve lower rental prices. In Spain, Vox is a star pupil, although until now, collusion with groups that specialize in evicting tenants has been the defining characteristic of the Spanish far right. Now, on a new path to capture the working-class vote, in Catalonia and throughout the StateVox joins this international trend, also followed by other parties within the Patriots for Europe coalition, which includes prominent far-right figures such as France's Marine Le Pen, Hungary's Viktor Orbán, and Italy's Matteo Salvini. Far from the ultraliberalism advocated by Argentine President Javier Milei, this conglomerate has opted for a combination of liberal and interventionist ideas, seasoned with rhetoric against international investment funds, a tactic also employed by the populist left. In a conversation with ARA, Carlos Hernández Quero, Vox's strategist and deputy spokesperson in Congress, points out that not many governments within his political family have yet chosen to impose such clear limits on investment funds. And he justifies this approach. Trumpian"It's a matter of understanding the purpose of the policies. Having property ownership as widely distributed as possible is best," he states. His premise is that "living in a home you own" is the most desirable and that to achieve this, "we must combat unfair competition from large funds or foreign capital." In other words, they advocate for market intervention, but at the same time, "promoting construction and opting for low taxes." A "less dogmatic" approach than that of the United States, with the objective of "discouraging purchases by international players," which "heats up the market and drives up prices." "People live in houses, not corporations," Trump said to justify the announcements of recent weeks.

Around twenty residents of six apartment blocks in Barcelona have jointly protested their owner, the investment fund Vandor, because it has decided to stop renewing their contracts in order to convert their apartments, where some residents have lived for decades, into room rentals. "Vandor has bought fourteen properties with a total of two hundred apartments for purely speculative purposes and is evicting the tenants," explained the residents of these blocks, along with the Renters' Union, at a press conference this Friday outside one of the affected properties, located at 62 Avenir Street in Barcelona.

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.