"We're still here, in front of the B9": the square where those expelled from the old Badalona high school were living in squalor is being cleared

BarcelonaThis Friday morning, Haji woke up to good news and bad news. The good news is that his dog, Tupac, will have a roof over his head. The Foundation for Advice and Action in Defense of Animals (FAADA) in Barcelona will take care of him. The bad news is that he will remain homeless. Until Wednesday, his home was the B9 high school in Badalona. Evicted, all he had was a corner in a tent, right in the square across the street, to avoid sleeping rough. Now he doesn't even have that.

On Wednesday, the sun hadn't yet risen when the blue lights of the police illuminated the former B9 high school, forcing its residents to pack their ordinary bags. This Friday, also around seven in the morning, a crowd of officers from the Badalona Municipal Police arrived at the square where about a hundred of the former occupants of the old high school are sleeping. They had transformed this small clearing into a new B9 campsite, with bonfires at night to heat their food and ward off the cold, and with fifty tents pitched. On Friday morning, city police evicted them again from this area after two nights of sleeping rough. This eviction has once again sparked calls for reopen the Can Bofí Vell municipal hostel that the council closed last year and has even prompted a statement from two UN rapporteurs, who see the eviction as a "serious violation" of human rights.

The activists who are mediating between the police and the evicted residents these days, members of the Socialist Housing Union of Catalonia and Badalona Acull, asked the officers for more time to clear the encampment. However, several municipal cleaning service vehicles entered the square alongside the police. While the residents packed up their tents and piled up all their belongings again in a corner a few meters away, the sound of an excavator could be heard in the background, razing the cluster of self-built shacks that occupied part of the old high school's courtyard. These makeshift structures were demolished just 48 hours after the eviction, before the City Council began the more detailed work inside the former school building. Some residents still say they have documents inside that they cannot retrieve. The buildings that housed the old high school, which contain asbestos, will be demolished after the Christmas holidays by a specialized company.

Attempts to return

He second The eviction of the B9 building was carried out "without incident," according to municipal sources. Shortly afterward, the police warned the occupants that they also had to leave the street where they had left their belongings. Around noon, they began to disperse, but soon after, once the cleanup operation in the square had finished, they regrouped in front of the B9. The police are maintaining a presence that prevents them from reoccupying the space and also prohibits them from setting up the tents they have used in recent nights. "We're still here. In front of the B9," explains Younous Drame, one of the first occupants to arrive at the former high school.

A "pressure tactic"

Carles Sagués, spokesperson for the Badalona Acull platform, criticized the fact that the thorough cleaning of the esplanade was carried out "curiously" now, after about fifty people had been spending the night there for the past two nights. "The residents have been complaining for a long time that only a superficial cleaning is ever done here," he said. He also criticized the scale of the police operation that accompanied the cleaning crews to remove the migrants occupying the square, and defended the officers' good attitude, saying they "understood they had to clear the area, and did so as calmly as possible." For Sagués, it was all a "pressure tactic." "They can't be on the street and, on top of that, have the insecurity of knowing they're being threatened with eviction.""She added, and also criticized the mayor, Xavier García Albiol, for "boasting" about the actions of the last few days when he left people "completely abandoned." The spokesperson for the Housing Union of Catalonia, Gisela Bermúdez, has called for "urgent rehousing" for those affected. Currently, no such space exists. Cáritas continues negotiating with the Generalitat (Catalan government) and the City Council to find it, and sources from the organization indicate that an agreement is getting closer. In the meantime, some parishes will open so that the occupants can eat and use the hygiene facilities. The lawyer Mireia Salazar, who represents those evicted, denounced the lack of support from the Badalona City Council and the Generalitat for those affected, despite the conditions set by the court-ordered eviction. "It is a flagrant breach of the law. The regulations required them to provide dignified rehousing," she criticized. She also denounced the "pressure" exerted by the Badalona Municipal Police to prevent migrants from camping outside the B9 building, despite the weather forecast predicting rain for the city in the coming days. The tents, she says, are currently "the only shelter" they have: "We're facing a potentially very rainy weekend, and we're wondering what will happen." She also demanded—as did the Minister of Social Rights and Inclusion on Thursday—the reopening of the Can Bofí Vell municipal shelter: "It's very serious that a municipality of 240,000 inhabitants doesn't have this emergency residential shelter."

UN Condemnation

The mass eviction in Badalona also prompted statements from two UN rapporteurs who condemned the eviction and warned that it could constitute a "serious violation" of human rights. Both experts issued a joint statement criticizing the Badalona City Council for refusing to offer "housing alternatives" to those affected, among whom they emphasized were "women, the elderly, and people with medical needs." Furthermore, they highlighted that the eviction was accompanied by a "stigmatizing discourse" on the part of Badalona's public authorities. They also criticized the equating of the residents of Block B9 with "a source of insecurity" and the labeling of them as criminals or violent, as Albiol did.

The Black African and Afro-descendant Community in Catalonia (CNAA) has opened a resistance fund to support those affected with a bank transfer (ES41 0005 8414 3332 8366) or via Paypal (paypal.me/CNAACAT) with the concept Contribution B9, or by making a material contribution at Alfonso XII Street, 691, opposite the old B9.