The Vallcarca shanty town under threat of eviction

BarcelonaTensions rise in the Vallcarca neighborhood around the settlement of shacks that has been providing shelter for some seventy people for years and which is located on municipal land where an urban development plan is planned to transform the neighbourhood. The Barcelona City Council has judicial authorisation to carry out a "technical inspection" of the settlement and analyse the conditions in which these people live, but the deadline ends this Saturday and so far they have not been able to gain access. The neighbours who live there, with the support of social movements in the neighbourhood, have prevented them from entering on up to three occasions, the last on 11 February: they fear that the inspection will end with an "express eviction" without a residential solution for those affected, a situation that they have been trying to negotiate for years without success.

Far from seeking a path to a negotiated solution, the Security Commission of the City Council fanned the flames on Wednesday by approving a proposal from the PP that urges the municipal government to evict the settlement "without further delay" by means of the security forces. The proposal, which sought to speed up the settlement's outcome, was approved due to the abstention of the PSC; with the votes in favour of Junts and VOX and the rejection of ERC and Barcelona en Comú.

However, municipal sources emphasise to ARA that the PP's proposal "is not binding" and that the plans remain intact. "The devices that have tried to enter the settlement and have been prevented from entering are technical, not police," they stress. "We are in the stage of inspecting, which is an obligation of the City Council, and seeing what risks exist for people," the same sources add.

This Thursday, Mayor Jaume Collboni has also tried to downplay the proposal: he has insisted that "there is nothing imminent", in reference to the eventual eviction and has assured that what is being done is "studying what is the situation in which the people who live there are." Collboni has also expressed the municipal government's concern about this issue and has related the situation to a problem of "homelessness and substandard housing" throughout Europe. "We can neither conform nor live together normally," Collboni said in an interview on Catalunya Ràdio.

Social movements are distrustful

However, Collboni's attempts to calm things down have only aroused more suspicions among the residents of the settlement and social movements, who are increasingly convinced that the council will end up acting. without having resolved a residential solution for those affected"We have been trying to negotiate a dignified exit for these people for many years, we do not want them to live in these conditions either," Aran Llivina, spokesperson for the Som Barri neighbourhood association, told ARA. He regrets that there is a "lack of political will to dialogue" and assures that the urban development plan proposed in this area "will mean a brutal gentrification of the neighbourhood outwards." "We are playing for much more than a dignified exit for these families, we are also playing for the model of the city that we want," he says, while adding that the housing movements will make a strong response if the eviction is carried out.

"With the inspection, the City Council will look for any excuse to say that there are risks for people, to bring in the Firefighters and the cleaning teams and to kick out the neighbours in order to have the space free and to carry out their urban development plan," says Llivina. Now, with the deadline looming - the authorisation to carry out the technical inspection ends on the 22nd - Som Barri says that they do not know "what the next step of the City Council will be". "We assume that we will wake up one day with several police vans at the doors of the settlement," laments Llivina, who recalls that the scene is not new, in reference to what happened. just a few weeks ago in Antiga Massana.

This association claims that during all this time no decent solution has been offered to the families: "They only offer to go to the Social Services, a few nights of shelter or boarding and that's it." The few families that have managed to leave the shacks, emphasize from Som Barri, is because the social movements themselves have helped them to settle in occupied flats in the area. "They are flats of the City Hall, which have been empty for years," they explain. They have settled there, above all, families with minor children to avoid the social services separating the family nucleus.

Divided neighbors

The settlement of shanty towns, just below the Vallcarca bridge, on Calle de l'Argentera, has a very important network of support from neighbours and from movements for decent housing, but there are also other associations and neighbours in the neighbourhood who are against it. The deputy mayor and Security, Albert Batlle, stressed in the Security Commission that it is a "very complex" issue.

In the neighbourhood not everyone is in favour of the camps and graffiti can be seen both in defence of the group of Romanian families who live there and against them. Among those who are opposed, who demand a clean-up of the area, they highlight the dirt that accumulates both inside the settlement and in the surroundings. Most of these families are dedicated to the scrap metal business and the accumulation of old junk is considerable. They also emphasise the image of the city that is promoted by such a visible settlement, right at a tourist pilgrimage point, where visitors often leave the metro to go towards Parc Güell.

According to data from the City Council, at the end of 2023, Barcelona had around 77 active settlements – where around 300 people live –, 60% of them between the districts of Sant Andreu and Sant Martí.