Neighborhood pressure forces the owner of the Sant Agustí block to negotiate for the first time

BarcelonaFor the first time in more than two years of conflict, the foreign fund New Amsterdam Developers (NAD) is opening up to dialogue in the face of the crisis over the Sant Agustí street block in Vila de Gràcia, which it wants to convert into coliving. The ombudsman of Barcelona, David Bondia, announced this Friday that the fund has asked the court to postpone the eviction of Txema Escorsa, which was to be attempted again this Wednesday after three weeks ago neighborhood pressure managed to halt a first eviction.

In a statement, the ombudsman explained that the property registered the request to halt the eviction with the court this Friday. A document in which it asks to postpone the eviction for three months, "with the aim of trying to find an out-of-court solution to the existing conflict, without prejudice to the rights and guarantees of each party." In a statement, the Tenants' Union considered the postponement of the eviction an "important step forward," but demanded that the final solution guarantee that "all residents of the block have new rental contracts and that no one has to leave their home."

A new scenario is thus opening up after many months in which neither the City Council nor the residents managed to get New Amsterdam Developers to sit down at a negotiation table. In fact, during the eviction that was to take place, the property representatives pressured to carry out the eviction despite the presence of hundreds of people blocking access to the building. It was the judicial delegation that halted it to avoid generating a public order problem.

That day, however, the pressure on New Amsterdam Developers was immense. Not only because of the people who filled Sant Agustí street to prevent Escorsa's eviction, but also because of the public stances taken by the City Council and the Generalitat. The President of the Generalitat himself, Salvador Illa, showed his "outright" rejection of the eviction. "In no city in Catalonia will we allow abusive actions against the right of residents to live in their neighborhood," he assured.

That day, the Minister of Territory and Housing, Sílvia Paneque, also revealed that the Catalan Government had detected that the fund could be committing a serious offense for non-compliance with the seasonal rent cap. According to the sanctioning regime, this could entail a fine of a minimum of 90,000 euros for each of the homes. For its part, the Barcelona City Council has already imposed coercive fines amounting to 20,000 euros for not having legalized works that the council's inspection services considered irregular. For now, despite neighbors believing it could be done, it has not opened any sanctioning process for non-compliance with the 30% reserve.

The standoff between NAD and the neighbors began in December 2023, when the fund bought the property. Since then, it has refused to extend rental contracts with the aim of converting the apartments into rooms as they became vacant. A route that at the time —before the Parlament's law to regulate seasonal rentals came into force— allowed them to charge 2,700 euros per month for an apartment for which they had previously paid 775 euros. Currently, four of the eleven apartments in the Sant Agustí block are already coliving. Two more are vacant.

And the Papallona block?

Once NAD has opened up to negotiate over the Sant Agustí block, it remains to be seen what will happen with the residents of Casa Fajol, popularly known as the Papallona block and also owned by this fund. As the Socialist Housing Union of Catalonia (SHSC) explained in a statement, the first eviction of a resident from this building, Corina, and her two children is scheduled for April 29th. The question now is whether the fund will follow the same path as in the Escorsa case and seek a negotiated solution for the residents of the Papallona block, or if, in this case, it will not request any postponement of the eviction.

The ombudsman of Barcelona, David Bondia, already mediated between the property and the residents in the Casa Orsola case. A crisis that was then resolved with the collaborative purchase of the block by the City Council and the social entity Habitat 3.