Neighbors of the shantytown fire: "I woke up to the noise of the explosions"

BarcelonaSeveral 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.

As ARA has been able to verify, the shacks affected by the flames were near the entrance to the settlement, next to fences that mark its perimeter. Firefighters located and piled up to 13 completely charred butane and camping gas canisters at the entrance. Inside the plot, there are many more shacks, around twenty, which remain standing and inhabited, including some minors, as confirmed by the City Council.

"I woke up to the sound of explosions."

According to several residents, the flames were accompanied by several explosions. "I woke up shortly before 7:00 a.m. because of the noise of the explosions," María Dolores, a resident of the building across the street, told ARA. "There were several very loud explosions, and then I saw the column of fire and smoke from my window. It was truly frightening to see," she continued. The street was soon filled with firefighters, and traffic was closed on the streets and bridges adjacent to the occupied lot.

The neighbors are divided between empathy, rejection, and resignation regarding the settlement, which is not the only one in the area. "It's been like this for months and months, and the City Council doesn't care. It was bound to happen," Ana remarks while watching the firefighters from behind the police cordon. Next to her, another neighbor replies, "Yes, they do their jobs, but the people are also very inconsiderate, and they've left everything dirty and full of junk. The police drive by every day," she asserts. Jaume, on the other hand, is much more belligerent: "We neighbors are terrified, powerless, and very angry. The people who live here—he says, referring to the inhabitants of the vacant lot—are now stealing scrap metal, and some have even told us they have criminal records and have been in prison," he claims. "The truth is, it started with just a few shacks, but in the last year or year and a half, this place has become overcrowded," Ángel adds. "The truth is, I try not to come through here at night because it scares me, and besides, with all the accumulated filth, there are enormous rats," María Dolores concludes.

Open investigation

The investigation into the cause of the fire, which has not yet been made public, is being handled by the Mossos d'Esquadra (Catalan police). At the moment, all hypotheses remain open, from the accidental explosion of a gas cylinder to the possibility that it was arson. Some residents of other settlements in the area, who traveled to the Huelva Street settlement this morning to see what had happened, told reporters that fights and conflicts in this area were constant. "There's everything here, and everything happens," admits Mubarak, who lives in a settlement on the other side of the bridge. "There are drugs, there are problems every day, and the police have to intervene constantly. The fire didn't just appear out of nowhere," he suggested.

Early this morning, the PP leader in the City Council, Daniel Sirera, posted a video of the fire on social media with the following message: "We have been demanding the eviction of the shantytown settlement for months [...]. How long will this negligence continue? How many more warnings are needed?" Sirera also went to the scene and demanded that social services take charge of the people living in squalor on the site and that the area be cleaned up. "Barcelona cannot be a city of shantytowns," he said.

Also from Junts, the group's leader in the City Council, Jordi Martí Galbis, criticized the fact that it was only a matter of time before such an event occurred given the "inaction" of Jaume Collboni's government. In a post on his social media profile, he argued that "the settlements must be dismantled and vulnerable people must be attended to urgently." Meanwhile, the ERC municipal group has submitted a written request in the Sant Andreu and Sant Martí districts asking for "urgent action regarding the degradation of the area surrounding the construction of the future Sagrera station." They are demanding "an immediate action plan" and "the implementation of permanent maintenance and security measures until the works are completed." ERC councilor Jordi Coronas has denounced that the municipal government and ADIF—the owner of the land—"have been looking the other way for too long" while the space "degrades" and "the neighborhood" and the people living in the settlements are put at risk. Sources from Barcelona en Comú have also deemed it "urgent" that Mayor Jaume Collboni "take bold action to combat homelessness in Barcelona, ​​a cross-cutting phenomenon largely due to the housing crisis." Therefore, they demanded an action plan from the mayor to increase accommodation for homeless people, along the lines of what the Comuns put to a vote last week in the Social Rights Committee, which passed with the abstention of the PSC.