A macro-eviction that threatens 50 people in Barcelona, pending the BOE
The eviction affects 50 people from 18 occupied apartments in Sant Andreu, where vulnerable people and at least seven minors live
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BarcelonaThe same week that the housing crisis forces early elections and a general strike, and the same day that the new housing decree is published in the Official State Gazette (BOE), about fifty people are facing a mass eviction in Barcelona. It concerns block number 74 on Llenguadoc street, in the Sant Andreu district, where there are eighteen apartments occupied for nine years. Several vulnerable people live there, including at least seven minors.
Many are migrants and report that in recent years they have suffered all kinds of harassment to force them out. They explain that empty apartments have been boarded up, interiors have been destroyed to make them uninhabitable, and they have even received threats to leave.
Union sources explain that the property belonged to Reale Seguros, but after several legal proceedings and seeing that successfully evicted apartments were re-occupied, it was sold last year to the company Thunder Optical Minur S.L, which has been trying to evict the people occupying the apartments since then.
A large police operation is expected this Wednesday morning to carry out the eviction, while waiting to reach a last-minute agreement to suspend or postpone it. The people living in the block are clinging to the hope that the two decrees approved again by the Spanish government on Tuesday will suspend the eviction, as they come back into force this Wednesday.
Sánchez restores the decrees
One of these decrees temporarily suspends evictions for vulnerable families and incorporates measures such as the extraordinary extension of leases for two years, in addition to numerous tax incentives both for the purchase of apartments and for tenants and small landlords.
The other decree establishes indefinite rental contracts and compensation for the tenant if the landlord wants to end the contract early. The expectation, however, is that ultimately only the first one will go ahead, since the permanent deputation of the Parliament – the parliamentary body that replaces the Congress when elections are called or during vacation periods – will reject the other.
