Twenty Badalona apartments evacuated from the same island where the deadly collapse occurred: "You have half an hour to get out."

Badalona"You have half an hour to leave, take everything you think you'll need and come down." This is the message that the Guardia Urbana (City Police) has been communicating apartment by apartment this Monday afternoon to the residents of block 115 of Ausiàs Marc Street, in Badalona. The City Council has ordered the evacuation of the twenty apartments and the premises of this building, located in the same block where In February 2024, three people died when a building collapsed. The council made the decision after municipal technicians who inspected the property last week detected cracks and unsupported ceilings that pose a "high risk of collapse," according to the inspection report seen by ARA: "Urban Discipline carried out an inspection and it was determined that everyone should be checked."

Residents who were inside received the announcement from the Guardia Urbana starting at 1:00 p.m. Those who were not there at the time found out through messages from neighbors and on social media. The blog is mainly home to tenants, some of them in vulnerable situations. In addition, many had no alternative place to go and around twenty residents have been on the street for more than five hours waiting for the arrival of municipal social workers, who have not shown upFinally, shortly before 6:00 p.m., the Barcelona Social Emergency Service (CUESB) arrived. This service is contracted by metropolitan municipalities to temporarily care for those affected who cannot stay at home. Starting tomorrow, social services will review the cases of the victims individually.

More than five hours waiting for social services to arrive

The neighbors who were at home, like Natalia, had just enough time to gather "their documentation and as much clothing as possible," uncertain of when they would be able to return. All of this came with the "surprise" of this sudden eviction, since although they were aware of the inspection last week, the neighbors had not been notified of the eviction, complained Jhean Pierre. He had to notify his mother to return from work, as they were being evicted. Mother and son waited for social services to arrive for the rest of the afternoon: "The police told us that if we don't have anywhere to go, we'll wait here until they arrive," the man explained. The rest of the tenants who arrived throughout the afternoon were given a "reasonable amount of time" to collect some belongings, according to an officer.

In the absence of social services, around 4:30 p.m. the Guardia Urbana began taking notes on the affected families requiring accommodation: "Four adults and three children (one of them a baby a few months old); a mother with a nine-year-old daughter; and an adult and his mother," officers said. And so on, up to more than twenty people who suddenly found themselves on the street. Carlos Ramos, another evicted person, lamented "the abandonment" by social services: "Elderly people and people with reduced mobility live here and were unable to leave until hours after the initial notice from the Urbana," he lamented. In this sense, Ramos criticized the fact that social services did not appear with the police to provide an immediate solution.

Fear of new inspections

Concerns about further evictions have spread to other neighboring blocks, as the City Council is conducting inspections. Begoña's parents live in the building next door—number 113: "Next week there's an inspection scheduled for this one, and a neighbor in the attic has reported that there are cracks that he believes have gotten bigger since the last time," she explains, fearing that her parents could be next, ending up on the street.

The council has blamed the residents for the lack of maintenance on the property and warned that they will not be able to return until they make the necessary renovations. After the tragic collapse in 2024, the City Council inspected all the buildings in the block, built decades ago by the developer himself. These inspections revealed the poor condition of many homes, and the municipal government, "due to the urgency of the situation," subsidized the installation of shoring in many apartments at a total cost of one million euros.

Now, however, the City Council led by Xavier García Albiol is asking them to renew these struts and also to remove the illegal buildings that have been detected in the attics. In fact, the inspection report refers to "attic floor overloads", a fact that some neighbors like Begoña assure that these could be works and extensions carried out by the previous owners and not by the current tenants, as in the case of number 113. The municipal technicians who have inspected the property have detected that the corresponding work has not been carried out and have found new cracks in unsupported ceilings.