Living in an old shop to avoid the streets: "If only the child gets an education, we've already won."

Sant Adrià de BesòsBefore finding this converted shop in Sant Adrià de Besòs, Carlos Arturo Morillo and Lilian Rosibel Flores had been "deceived" in Esplugues de Llobregat. A man had promised them work and a place to live, and their desperation to get ahead led them to accept the offer without considering whether it could be, as it ultimately was, a scam. "He stole everything from us. He didn't pay us what he had promised, and we found ourselves out on the street," says Morillo, sitting on the downstairs sofa, keeping a watchful eye on the front door in case the heavy rain starts to leak inside.

The Bolivian couple has a 9-year-old son, and It represents the face of poverty in CataloniaA migrant family with children. Like so many Latino migrant families, the woman arrived firstAnd she quickly found work caring for the elderly. It was January 2022, and six months later the father joined her—with the child—after selling their properties and car to "invest everything" in starting a new life in Catalonia. This was Morillo's second attempt to migrate. Twenty years earlier, she had tried it on the dreaded train known as the Beast to cross Mexico on the way to the United StatesBut in Houston, border police deported him. "All my dreams vanished in a single second," he laments.

In their case, they explain, the motivation for emigrating to Catalonia wasn't so much poverty, because their salaries as nurses and bakers allowed them to get by. The problem is "insecurity," they say, referring to gang violence, which "makes a peaceful life impossible," a common situation throughout Central America.

The 2022 headbutt was a way to escape, and it also stemmed from a desire for his son, who was four years old at the time, to have opportunities to thrive. The boy attends school and plays football at a children's club, a way for him to get an education and, at the same time, an escape from the harshness of his family's situation. "If the boy is just getting an education, we've already won," says Morillo, proud that the child speaks Catalan fluently and tries to teach his parents.

With a rental contract

The place where they live is an old wine cellar, right on the border between Sant Adrià and Barcelona. The couple first ended up squatting there when it was a dirty, uninhabitable place. But without stable work and with their savings invested in the journey—"Emigrating is expensive," Flores points out—they had no alternative. They shared the space with other people until the offer from Esplugues came along. And they ended up returning in search of refuge, but they managed to convince the owner of the premises to let them rent it out. They wanted to avoid problems, especially for their son, for whom they want to provide physical and emotional stability. They pay 650 euros a month in a formal and legal rent, and they have a certificate of occupancy. Making ends meet for a family without a residence permit and with sporadic and intermittent jobs is "difficult," but the couple makes up for it with "a desire to improve" and to integrate. And with sacrifice. Their priority is paying the rent, because they understand that their home is their center of life, so they use their income to cover very basic expenses, and they also rely on food donations from social organizations. Without family in Catalonia, they value the support they receive from families at their son's school or close neighbors. Thanks to these connections, they've furnished the place: a table, a bed, an old TV... They cleared out all the old junk and cleaned and painted it, creating a fairly pleasant space.

The Curtain Clue

Despite the cleanliness and the four walls that protect them from the elements, life in an old, unadapted commercial space is now the new face of homelessness or shantytown living, reveals David Espinós, director of Amigos del Cuarto Mundo (Friends of the Fourth World). This small organization has been dedicated for 25 years to supporting residents of warehouses and informal settlements in Barcelona, ​​and in recent years has also begun assisting those occupying ground floors. Urban development pressure in areas like Poblenou, stricter municipal regulations, and the decline of the scrap metal business have emptied the settlements, and many of their occupants have relocated to old, closed shops. "Here they go more unnoticed by the neighbors, and we often spot them by the curtains hanging down," explains Espinós.

The organization periodically conducts outreach in neighborhoods like La Pau and La Verneda, and it was during one of these outreach efforts that they met the Bolivian couple. "Their case is unusual because they've managed to find a home, but the premises are generally unsafe places; there's a lot of dampness, exposed wires, and no water or electricity," the activist explains.

Faced with a lack of affordable housing, the premises converted into housing (Whether operating clandestinely or legally) these types of businesses have proliferated across much of the metropolitan area, although obtaining official permits is not always easy. Furthermore, the market for these basement apartments is rife with scams and abuses, such as the illegal sale of keys for €2,000 or rents collected under the table, making these spaces havens of insecurity. Often, they represent the last hope for the most vulnerable, such as undocumented migrants.