Slum dwelling became a consolidated reality in the Barcelona of the 60s, with nuclei that became true neighborhoods like Montjuïc or El Somorrostro, but it seemed to have been left behind in the 90s with the major urban development projects that the Olympic Games brought. Instead, homelessness was never completely eradicated, but it was linked to situations of extreme marginality or addiction. Now, with the arrival of new contingents of immigrant population (just as happened in the 60s), both homelessness and a new form of slum dwelling are proliferating again and pose an enormous political challenge to a society that, while it has prospered economically greatly in the last 50 years, maintains significant social differences.

There are realities that make us uncomfortable. Not because they are new, but because they remind us of what we prefer not to see. Homelessness is one of them. It is not an urban anecdote or an inevitable landscape; it is the symptom of a collective failure, of a society that has normalized that there are people who have nowhere to sleep. And, even more serious, that has begun to design spaces so that they cannot be there.

He eviction of the 400 surviving people The incident at the former B9 high school in Badalona has highlighted the lack of public services capable of providing a quick and urgent response to homelessness, a crisis that affects at least 7,000 people across CataloniaAccording to a survey of metropolitan municipalities and towns with more than 20,000 inhabitants, published by the ombudsman, there are approximately 400 settlements providing shelter to more than 2,600 people. Since 2022, Parliament has been processing the proposed law on homelessness, championed by Antoni Milian i Massana, Professor of Administrative Law at the University of Barcelona, with the support of five major social organizations.

Catalan municipalities have issued a plea for help, urging the Generalitat (Catalan government) not to abandon them in assisting people experiencing homelessness. While there is no official census quantifying homelessness, it is clearly a widespread phenomenon. It already surpasses the metropolitan area and extends to small towns throughout the country. Local councils agree that, currently, the problem lacks sufficient financial resources.