Manlleu mourns the death of the five teenagers: "It's cold in the building today, it's cold in Manlleu"
Neighbors of the victims recount that the attic of the destroyed building was a meeting point for the boys.
ManlleuA group of girls gather near number 66A on Montseny Street in Manlleu because they are confused. They knew some of the five minors—one 14-year-old, three 16-year-olds, and one 17-year-old—who died on Monday night in a fire in the blog's atticThey went together to the Antoni Pous i Argila Institute in the Osona municipality, and while hugging her friends, one of the girls says they came to "try to process what happened." While the Mossos d'Esquadra (Catalan police) investigate the events—officers coming and going—another group of teenagers gathers, looking at the images circulating of the burned-out storage room. They also shared a classroom at the institute with the victims, and they too are baffled as to how an afternoon of leisure ended so tragically. "The storage room was a place to hang out, like all young people do," says one of them, the tallest, while his classmates' eyes fill with tears. Throughout Tuesday morning, the area outside the building where this tragic event took place has become a place of pilgrimage for friends and acquaintances of the victims. Residents of the Erm neighborhood in Manlleu also came, many to offer their condolences to the young people and their families. Whether due to the low temperatures, typical of a February morning, or the curious onlookers who had gathered, the atmosphere was cold. This was an expression, in fact, used by the municipal architect, Enric Gil, after inspecting the building to rule out any structural damage. "It's cold in the building today, and it's cold in Manlleu," he said, underscoring the tragedy.
The speed of the flames
In the building's entrance hall, another group of young residents recounted that the fire started before 9 p.m. and everything happened very quickly. A resident on the sixth floor, directly below the storage units, realized something was wrong when he heard "a very loud frying noise," his son explained. He immediately banged on doors to get people out of their apartments, but the young people in the storage unit couldn't get out.
While awaiting the results of the police investigation to determine the cause of the fire, witnesses explained that thick smoke quickly spread "through the stairwell and the apartments of the building," making visibility almost impossible. The storage units are in the attic and are spaces of about 8 square meters where residents store items (bicycles, mattresses, gas cylinders), although not all of them are occupied. Possibly in one of those empty, unlit, and unventilated spaces, the young people met their deaths when "something" caught fire, according to the Mossos d'Esquadra (Catalan police), who did not confirm the neighbors' account that four other young people—two girls and two boys—were with them. The autopsy will determine the cause of death and may answer the question of how the teenagers were unable to escape. What is known is that the young people did not live in the building, but they did go to the attic regularly without anyone stopping them, taking advantage of the fact that the doors are always open. However, everyone in the neighborhood knew them by sight, knew about their families, and their stories. One man explained that four of the five victims are children from families with "absent parents," who "are on the streets because they are better off than at home." He is saddened by the suffering of the families, who have received psychological support from the very beginning, according to the mayor of Manlleu, Arnau Rovira.
This afternoon at 7:00 PM, the City Council has called for a minute of silence in memory of the young people and in solidarity with the affected families.
No complaints
Mayor Rovira explained that the City Council has received no complaints regarding the misuse of storage rooms in buildings, unlike in other properties in the neighborhood. A resident explained how, for months, the parking space of an apartment she rents has been sealed off by police order after it was discovered that people were living in substandard conditions inside. Rovira confirmed this situation of "substandard housing" in many buildings throughout the municipality and noted that he had a meeting scheduled for Friday with the Regional Minister of Territory, Silvia Paneque, to discuss future housing rehabilitation projects.
