Tension in Vallcarca due to the eviction of a family with two minors

BarcelonaDozens of people are gathered this Wednesday morning in front of the workshop at number 3 Farigola street, in the Vallcarca neighborhood of Barcelona, where a family with two minors lives, to try to prevent their eviction. At the same time, up to six riot police vans from the Guardia Urbana have also arrived at this point to carry out the eviction. Already early in the morning, they had set up a strong police cordon. The first moments of tension were experienced when some of the gathered people tried to overcome the police barrier.

The affected property is an old mechanical workshop owned by the City Council where, according to the Vallcarca Housing Union, six adults and two children aged 10 and 9 live and work. The council explained that in the last sixteen months it has offered several "residential alternatives" to those affected, who live in "substandard housing" conditions, but that the family has declined them. Spokespeople for the Vallcarca Housing Union, on the other hand, have responded that the council's options involved dividing the family unit and moving them to another area, which also meant changing the minors' schools.

The council detailed that, in the case of the family with two minors, the council offered them two homes, one in Torre Baró and another in Parc i la Llacuna del Poblenou, which were rejected. After mediation with the Ombudsman, it points out, the offer of the apartment in Poblenou was maintained and a third one was proposed. These sources said that all offers remain valid. As for the other two couples, the City Council has indicated that they have always rejected any link with social services.

The Neighborhood Association Som Barri defends that the family, of Roma-Gypsy origin, is "fully rooted in the neighborhood, despite the difficulties and discrimination they suffer, such as the impossibility of finding a rental apartment." "There has always been a willingness to dialogue," they emphasize, while lamenting that the response has been "the silence of the City Council".

An eviction with an open date

For its part, the Vallcarca Housing Union also denounces that the affected parties learned on Tuesday "through unofficial channels" that the eviction from the property would be carried out this Wednesday. It details that the communication arrived after last June they received a notification warning that the eviction would take place "within a period of 30 calendar days", without specifying the date. The union has reported that this is an "open-ended eviction", a practice that it considers contrary to fundamental rights, and recalls that, since December 2023, courts have been obliged to set a specific date and time for these actions.

These same entities have also criticized the strong police deployment planned to carry out the eviction, and calculate that the cost of the operation will be higher than what it would represent to cover more than a year's rent for the affected family.