Living in storage rooms, a desperate solution in Barcelona: "I've been like this for five years"

BarcelonaEl Bouchnafa was born 74 years ago in Nador, a Moroccan city of just over 100,000 inhabitants near Melilla. Almost three decades later, in 1977, Mohammed, who does not wish to be referred to by his real name, was born in the same city. "My family thinks everything is fine, that I have a job and an apartment," he says. Life, full of obstacles, has led Bouchnafa and Mohammed to become neighbors in Barcelona. The entrance has no number or doorbell. The door, locked with a padlock, leads to a tiny compartment, without light or water, and where he can only sleep lying diagonally on a piece of cardboard and a blanket. They live, door to door, in a storage space in the center of Barcelona.

The space measures no more than one and a half meters by one and a half meters. "And I'm lucky," says Bouchnafa as he scrubs his small cubicle, the storeroom of a lifetime, with clothes falling from the ceiling, pots and pans arranged on shelves, and a headlamp hanging on the door ready for when he closes it and is left in the dark. He compares his luck with that of other people—"about 12 or 13, depending on the day"—who sleep in this storage facility. He rents, for just over 100 euros a month, one of the "largest" storage rooms, located on a corner. He's been living here for five years now. Others pay between 30 and 50 euros for a kind of locker, no more than a meter high and no more than two meters deep, where they stretch out at night. At night, the scene is reminiscent of the niches in a cemetery, with the feet of tenants coming out of the lockers while they sleep.

They find it hard to admit they live in a locker and say they only store their things. But they have it set up for sleeping, with a small piece of cardboard, and on the sides they hang clothes, food, soap, toothbrushes, photographs, and souvenirs. "I live with my girlfriend now, but if she lets me, I'll come back here," says a young man who prefers not to give his name. This is the reality for some of the people who sleep in it: the storage room as a last resort when they haven't made enough money one month (some turn to stealing) or when they've been evicted from a squatted apartment.

Mohammed rented his storage unit seventeen years ago, and it's always been like a refuge. At first, he just stored his things. When his bricklaying, gardening, and electrician jobs fell through, he found a roof over his head. He's been living there permanently for a year, while persistently applying (and showing off the applications) for a social housing unit and training by taking courses (and showing off the diplomas) in gardening and renewable energy. He collects unemployment benefits that don't even reach 600 euros and dreams of a self-sufficient camper van in the middle of the mountains. He's an alcoholic and says he'd be rich if he'd saved every euro he's spent on beer. He's tried drug rehabilitation centers, so far without success.

He's lived in Catalonia since 1998. After working as a bricklayer for several years and having a room with a terrace—"I had such fantastic barbecues," he recalls—he found himself with nothing and went to where he kept everything. In his free time, he goes fishing at sea and denies that he gets too hot in the storage room, although he's sweating a drop as he says it. "I don't sell drugs or steal, and I'm better off here than on the street," he concludes.

"I'm better off here than in Morocco," Bouchnafa says. His wife and three children live in Nador, and he decided to make a living in Spain two decades ago. Life took him to Segovia, Mallorca, and Madrid, always working as a bricklayer, and finally to Barcelona. Now he receives a pension that also doesn't reach 600 euros and works in the scrap metal business when he's not at the mosque, where he religiously attends the five daily prayers.

Both Bouchnafa and Mohammed complain that, lately, they're having more trouble sleeping at night because of the noise and fights in the storage unit. They criticize the fact that the password has spread throughout the neighborhood and is becoming a hotbed of arguments. It's eleven o'clock on a Wednesday night, and in twenty minutes, more than ten people have entered or left the storage unit. Outside, a group of young people are fighting. Mohammed complains that a few days ago, a power bank was stolen from him, the first time he's been robbed since living in the storage units.

The storage unit managers explain that overnight stays are prohibited, and that they frequently change the entrance password and conduct inspections. They admit, however, that they cannot provide 24-hour security and have sometimes encountered these situations, turning a blind eye on some occasions when the tenants weren't problematic. They warn that this problem especially increases during the summer months, when some owners evict people from whom they sublet rooms and then end up subletting them to tourists.

The only alternative

Storage rooms, industrial warehouses, and vacant lots are the only alternative for those evicted from their homes. This situation is growing at the same rate as prices, and a dynamic is generated whereby, as incomes are reduced or insufficient to cope with the rising cost of housing, people fall deeper into the pit of exclusion and precariousness, says sociologist Albert Sales, head of the social rights department at the Institut Metròp.

Those who can no longer afford an apartment they go on to sublet a room, and those who don't arrive now have to scramble to avoid the streets. It's also more expensive to buy a key to an apartment to occupy it or to move into slum housing, a vacant lot, or an abandoned warehouse. The expert asserts that at this lowest level of the social pyramid, we can no longer speak of the housing market, "where a home is made, but rather we must speak of the accommodation market," where a temporary space is found for refuge. "People live in a storage room because they don't want to live on the streets," he says.

The obstacles to regularizing administrative situations or registering as a resident push migrants to the margins because they cannot access aid from public administrations. But the expulsion of migrants without residence permits, as demanded by right-wing and far-right groups, "is not a solution," the sociologist points out, because, as evidenced by the situation in the United States, "exemplary" expulsions that the Trump administration is practicing They only make "migrants' lives more precarious" and more exposed to all kinds of abuse.