To live poorly in a farmhouse without walls, doors, or windows: "We are trapped"

GironaBetween Girona and Salt, in a half-finished farmhouse, about twenty African boys, originally from countries like Gambia, Senegal, Mauritania, and Mali, are living in hardship. The house has no electricity or water. It also lacks doors and windows in the openings, and inside, there is only the structure of the main walls. The young men have improvised compartments with cardboard and fabrics where they sleep on mattresses, blankets, and camping tents. In the middle of the building, there is a staircase without walls or a railing, with a very dangerous fall into the void, especially at night. They cook in a room with a wood fire on the ground or with gas stoves, shower with jugs from the well, and have no toilets.

All residents have hard and wandering stories. Some have arrived here after living on the street, others come from supervised minor centers. Most are young people with drive, a desire to work, open, and respectful. They are not a source of problems, but they have a precarious eviction legal procedure, and the police forces, three weeks ago, took all their fingerprints to identify them.

One of them is M., 26 years old, from Gambia. He is bright and has initiative. He has been living in the house for three months after years of wandering through Catalonia. He speaks perfect Catalan. He is going through the procedures to obtain his registration and benefit from the extraordinary regularization process, like most of his companions. "We are here out of necessity. We have nowhere else to go. This is not a decent house; we are here because we have no alternative," he explains to ARA.

"We don't like people seeing us living like this"

Young people are eager to explain and denounce their situation to everyone who can help them, but, at the same time, they do not find it at all pleasant to show the undignified conditions in which they live, among rubble, dirt, bad smells, and vermin. "It's a pity to live like this. If someone comes who can give us a hand, we appreciate it, but we also don't like people to see us living like this. We are ashamed," continues M. And he concludes: "There are young people here with ambition, who want to get ahead. With a little help, you can achieve your goals, but as the system is, it is very difficult to do it alone. What we lack are the papers. For many years, some of us have been trapped in this situation where companies cannot hire us. Now, with regularization, we have hope." This young man would like to be a truck driver: he wants to start working in construction when he has the permits and later get his license to drive goods transport. 

Another young man is I., also from Gambia. He arrived in May and is 19 years old. For a week, he slept at the train station, in one of the improvised camps for asylum seekers that have been repeated in the city over the last year and a half. The police told them they couldn't stay and he ended up finding this option. "When I arrived I had no confidence, but now I am part of the group and we help each other a lot," he comments. And, in line with his companion, he adds: "There is a lot of talent here. People who want to work in the fields or play football. We are strong people," he explains. He would like to be a cook and usually cooks rice or pasta for the group at the house.

He is not the only one who has arrived at the farmhouse after passing through the intermittent African camps at the station, where there are now no tents: "I met other Africans at the station and they brought me here. It's better to live here than on the street, but when it's cold, you have to pile up many blankets because the windows are open. The worst is when it's windy," describes another young Gambian who speaks English.

Volunteer accompaniment

The young people in the house band together, but they are not alone. Several Girona entities accompany them, such as Càritas, Red Cross, Jokkere Endam, or Girona Acull. They visit them regularly, provide them with cleaning supplies, guide them through administrative procedures, or bring them food. Some volunteers also go once a week, have a snack, and share a moment of conversation. "It's a shame that this space isn't being used to generate a project that dignifies people and values all the talent here. A comprehensive and intelligent approach is needed," argues Lluís Casas, from Girona Acull.

The farmhouse, of great architectural value, is owned by a construction company. The entities have mediated to propose an urban tenancy project or the cession of spaces linked to training in rehabilitation tasks, but no initiative has prospered. The owner, who has the right to reclaim the house, is in favor of evicting them, and therefore, the situation of these twenty young people does not have a stable long-term solution. The City Council, for its part, offers them basic services and closely monitors the case to offer them an alternative in case the eviction proceeds.

"This is a systematic violation of rights: the right to housing, to work, and to a dignified life. As a city, we should ask ourselves how it is possible that we continue to allow situations like this, marked by racism and borders. We should not focus on them, but on ourselves as a society. Evicting them does not solve the problem, it only displaces it," states Núria Rodríguez Quesada, also from Girona Acull. Casas and Rodríguez are the initiators of the Reviu project, for the comprehensive support of migrant youth in situations of extreme vulnerability. And Rodríguez, furthermore, works at the University of Girona and is conducting a field study on migrant youth in situations of residential exclusion.

This is not the only case of shantytowns or substandard housing in the city. At the end of Barcelona road, in the old Simon factory, abandoned and in ruins, dozens of homeless people live in squalor. In this space, where an institute is planned to be built, the City Council has requested judicial authorization to carry out an eviction and has asked the residents to voluntarily leave the space. The intention is to offer alternatives to the most vulnerable people, but also to act in the face of the presence of some profiles linked to crime.