A resident of Badalona found a homeless man dead while bringing him a cup of broth.

BarcelonaA homeless man died on Tuesday, Three Kings' Day, on a street in Badalona. According to municipal sources, the Guardia Urbana (local police) received a call about the incident at 2 p.m. The SEM (Emergency Medical Service) arrived at the scene and found the man dead inside the parking garage where he was living. According to sources from social service organizations in Badalona, ​​the man was found this afternoon by a neighbor on Torres i Bages Street. They said he had been taking refuge on the porch of one of the buildings for several days, but the neighbor was unaware of it. A local resident and market worker noticed the man's situation and decided to help him. Around 1 p.m. this afternoon, he went down to the parking garage to offer him a cup of hot broth. When he went down to bring him the drink, he found the man dead and called for an ambulance. When the paramedics arrived, they confirmed the man's death. The causes are still unknown, and SEM sources explain that the case has been referred to the courts.

The night was very cold throughout the country, including Badalona, ​​with temperatures hovering around 2°C in the city center between Sunday night and the morning of Three Kings' Day, dropping to 1.2°C in the early hours. Furthermore, the moderate wind that blew during the early morning, with gusts of up to 40 km/h, caused the wind chill to drop below -5°C at times, creating an unusually frigid atmosphere on the central coast. Reported by Àlex Sancliment.

Controversy over Operation Cold

The man's death occurred just one day after the cold-weather shelter in Badalona received complaints from organizations about its insufficient resources. Initially, the Badalona City Council activated the shelter on Sunday night and opened a space in the La Colina pavilion, but organizations reported that the resources were completely inadequate and there were no beds available for overnight stays. They also criticized the fact that the shelter was located an hour's walk from the bridge where some of those evicted from the B9 prison are still sleeping. For this reason, no one sought refuge from the cold in the pavilion on Sunday night. Following the criticism, on Monday the city council and the Red Cross made fifteen beds available for overnight stays in the Badalona pavilion. According to the City Council, three people slept in the facilities opened to combat the cold wave on Three Kings' Night. "What the Badalona City Council is doing is shameful and inhumane," Carles Sagués, spokesperson for Badalona Acull, told ARA. The organization denounces that this is not the first homeless person to lose their life in Badalona in recent years and insists that the city has a facility "in perfect condition" to house homeless citizens. "In Badalona, ​​we still have the Can Bofí shelter, which is ready to use, with beds, blankets, and even toilet paper, but García Albiol decided to close it a year and a half ago," Sagués asserted. Beyond Badalona, ​​the Arrels Foundation also denounced on Monday that in Barcelona, ​​despite the drop in temperatures, reinforcements had not yet been activated to provide a place for the city's homeless to sleep during the recent cold nights. This Tuesday, Barcelona City Council announced in a statement that it will activate the alert phase of its cold weather operation tonight, adding 100 spaces for people sleeping on the streets. These are in addition to the 100 beds already available at the Emergency Night Shelter (CANE) since the beginning of winter. According to the council, the decision was made by the teams responsible for social emergency services in anticipation of nighttime temperatures approaching 0°C, "a particularly risky situation for homeless people sleeping on the streets."