Badalona, on the verge of the biggest eviction in Catalonia

BarcelonaMore than 400 people could end up on the street in the next 15 days, in what has been described as the largest eviction in Catalonia. Finally, the judge has given the green light to the eviction of B9, the abandoned former high school in Badalona. where these people live, most of them undocumented migrants with no alternative of accommodation. The City Council, led by the conservative Xavier García Albiol, has repeatedly stated its intention to evict them as soon as possible and has warned that it will only rehouse those already on the radar of social services, who are a minority. "The B9 is the result of his [Albiol's] policies," Younous Drame, one of the building's occupants, charged this Friday at a press conference in the Catalan Parliament, where representatives of the B9 occupants again demanded an alternative that does not force them to live on the streets, especially now that temperatures have plummeted.

According to the ruling of the Administrative Court No. 11 of Barcelona, ​​which ARA has accessed, the City Council has a period of fifteen days to evict them from the premises. The legal team representing the residents of building B9 has filed for an injunction with the High Court of Justice of Catalonia (TSJC) to try to halt the eviction, pending the filing of an appeal. For the moment, the Badalona City Council has not specified a timeline for the eviction nor commented on the judge's decision to authorize it. The judge has authorized the entry of police and the participation of locksmiths for the eviction, which, however, must be carried out with the "minimum force necessary" and "following the municipal services' protocol for assisting homeless people." According to the court order, the City Council has planned a social services team on the day of the eviction to "assist those who make a specific social request," with specialists in homelessness. However, the Public Prosecutor's Office believes that in the last year the city council has not taken "any action aimed at providing effective assistance to the people who were in the building at the time of their eviction." Regarding the possibility of referring these people to the social services of other municipalities, such as Santa Coloma de Gramenet, Masnou, or Barcelona, ​​the Public Prosecutor's Office considers that the request made by the City Council was "completely devoid of content" and offered "no material assistance to the people who are in a situation of social and economic vulnerability." The judge maintains that assistance measures for homeless people from municipal services must be adopted and that they must be offered emergency social care, since they are people in a vulnerable situation; however, this does not prevent the eviction.

Health risk

The court order includes a report from the Heritage Department warning of "the existence of serious and imminent risks to the health and safety of the occupants, given the obvious unsanitary conditions and the risk of fire due to the uncontrolled modification of the electrical installation and the presence of butane canisters used as an improvised stove inside." Conversely, the defense of the residents of building B9 argues that, given "the complete lack of residential alternatives and the evident risk of homelessness that a mass eviction would entail," it must be considered that they would be evicted in the middle of winter, when "the low temperatures multiply the risks to the health and lives of those evicted." The situation in this space, which has long been insufficient due to demand, highlights the municipal government's inaction on social issues. Albiol has evicted almost all the settlements in the city, and he has done so while spearheading a stigmatizing and criminalizing discourse. This August, the Mossos d'Esquadra (Catalan police) arrested a man for killing another inside the school during a fight. Some of the residents of the abandoned school explained to ARA (a Catalan newspaper) that they had only been in building B9 for a short time and barely knew them, but they didn't know where else to go and took them in. The nine cases of tuberculosis detected in the building over the last two years have not softened Albiol's stance—he remains determined to evict them as soon as possible—in favor of their removal. The Catalan Health Department has already ruled out any risk of the disease spreading, stating that all those who tested positive have received treatment, and ARA confirmed last November that some of the occupants had been hospitalized with the disease. However, they warned that the number of residents would continue to grow unless solutions beyond eviction were offered, and that no matter how much they are evicted from the B9 building or how much Albiol wants to expel them from Badalona, ​​they will not simply disappear.