Unprotected against eviction: "Politicians have no idea of the reality we live in"

BarcelonaThe social safety net measures, which were rejected in Congress on Thursday by the PP, Vox, and Junts parties, protected 60,000 vulnerable people across Spain, some 13,000 of them in Catalonia. One of them is Francesca Cervelló. This 63-year-old resident of the Putxet neighborhood in Barcelona has been dreading this day for months. "What will I do now? What will happen to me?" she asks in a conversation with AHORA.

Chance has led Francesca to a series of unfortunate events. Without a partner or children, she took care of her mother years ago when she fell ill. "An acquaintance told me she had an apartment available and offered it to me for a rent of 600 euros. The apartment had one more bedroom than mine, and I thought it would be suitable for my mother," she explains. The problems soon began. Although apartment prices weren't what they are now, Francesca remembers that the landlord often pressured her: "She would call me to say that she might be getting more money for the apartment or she would have her brother come to check on it." This went on for six years, with Francesca paying the rent, until the day the doctors recommended her mother's hospitalization and she was no longer the sole caregiver. "She went to a nursing home and I found a good job selling orthopedic products in a pharmacy. I thought life had turned around, that everything was starting to change, but three months later, cancer arrived," she continues. The disease kept her battling treatments and operations for a whole year. "The initial tumor was under my tongue, and after all the radiotherapy, they had to reconstruct my jaw with a bone from my leg, which is why I have difficulty speaking," she explains calmly. 800 euros pension and 600 euros rent

This precipitated everything. Permanent disability. A pension of 800 euros. And then the pandemic hit. "The doctors told me I couldn't work. And with a pension of 800 euros, in a short time I had to choose between paying the 600 euro rent or paying for utilities and food; coping with everything was impossible, and don't think I was eating steak every day!" she laments. From then on, her story becomes entangled in Social Services, bureaucratic back and forth, vulnerability reports, and the emergency housing board to find alternative, public housing. "I've been on the waiting lists for three years and nothing. Now when you call, they don't even tell you what number you're on the waiting list," she laments. In 2024, her landlord sued her for non-payment, but the eviction moratorium kept the proceedings on hold.

Until now. Life, she admits, is getting better. “I have this damned disease, I can’t work, I’ve been in and out of surgery for seven years, and now this? Do I really have to fight now with the possibility of ending up on the street? When will I ever be able to breathe easy? I’m so tired of fighting, I don’t have the strength for anything anymore,” she admits, visibly emotional. However, Francesca hasn’t given up. In the last two years, she has continued treatment, worked to get a public defender, sought help from the PAH (Platform of People Affected by Mortgages), gotten advice, and is a regular at government offices to make sure “all her paperwork is in order.”

“Now they tell me to start looking for a room and that they’ll help me, and I think: if they can help me pay for a room, why can’t they help me now? What will happen when I have a problem? I’m already trying to find solutions, but there are no rooms, no shelters, no boarding houses available;” "I'm glued to TV3, watching what they're saying, suffering all day, crying all day. I'm anxious and that scares me. I'm terrified to go out. I've even seen mothers with babies being evicted! Imagine what they'd do to me!" she reflects.

The organizations are calling for a solution.

Social organizations and platforms agree that repealing the eviction moratorium will trigger a new "avalanche of evictions." "We're talking about very vulnerable families. Almost 80% were already using social services because they had no other options," explains Irene Escorihuela, director of the Observatori Desca. "Now all these evictions will resume at once," warns Enric Aragonès, spokesperson for the Tenants' Union, who calls it "extremely irresponsible" to have let this measure expire. "It's true that we had criticized the moratorium for being insufficient, because it only stopped one in four evictions, but nevertheless, many have been avoided," explains Escorihuela, who emphasizes that from now on "there will be an avalanche of people looking for alternative housing that doesn't exist." The Catalan Third Sector Roundtable agrees that currently "neither the administrations nor social entities can cope with the potential wave of evictions." "It's an extremely worrying scenario," confesses Martí Batllori, coordinator of the Roundtable's housing group: "This measure was perhaps not the most suitable, it wasn't structural, it was a band-aid... but it protected many families," he adds. Batllori also calls for "political responsibility" and asks for a solution: "The fact that this measure has been dropped doesn't mean it can't be reinstated. This situation must be resolved; social balance is necessary, and we believe that this measure, which included compensation for landlords who had stopped receiving rent, was sufficiently balanced," he emphasizes. Escorihuela agrees that it would have been better to maintain the moratorium, "at least for a year," while landlords received compensation. "During this time, the government and communities could have been urged to work together to build an alternative that doesn't leave these people on the street. To do so without a safety net is very cruel," concludes the director, who says she feels "outrageous" that the political parties have used the employment narrative: "It's false; the number of jobs within the moratorium is minimal." "Juntos has jumped on the bandwagon of fake news, instead of understanding that we are facing a human rights issue," PAH spokespeople point out. "It's regrettable that they are joining the path of the most radical far right," they add, while calling for participation in the rally that all the organizations have scheduled for this Saturday afternoon in Plaça Sant Jaume in Barcelona.

Francesca knows exactly what she would say to the politicians. "Let them spend just one day unemployed, to know what that's like. They're out of touch with reality, they live well. They can't imagine the reality the rest of us live. They have apartments and second homes—he continues—and they live life to the fullest, which is short; but of course, at our expense. And we're the squatters," he concludes.