A week later, where are the displaced people from the Vallcarca settlement?

BarcelonaOn the site in the Vallcarca neighborhood where, until last week, dozens of shacks stood, there are now about 300 yellow concrete blocks, of the New Jersey type., which prevent anything else from being installed there. There has been no trace of the shacks (and the people who lived there) since last Thursday, Barcelona City Council decided to speed up the eviction and clean up the entire camp. On Wednesday night, a short circuit in a heater caused a fire in one of the barracks –which left one young man injured– and that accelerated the entire process. So, after many weeks of controversy and back-and-forth, Jaume Collboni's government evicted the twenty people who were still staying overnight, citing security concerns.

Now the shacks have been cleared out, but what has become of the people who were eking out a living? ARA has been able to verify that, far from disappearing, many remain in the neighborhood, now occupying other spaces. "They didn't give us any viable alternative, so neighbors have helped us find a roof, even if it's temporary," explains one of the evicted Moroccan youths and a friend of the boy injured in the fire, who remains hospitalized. The 28-year-old and another 24-year-old boy are staying in a neighborhood establishment and visit their injured friend whenever they can. They say the boy was studying pharmacy in Ukraine, but decided to leave with the war. Here in Barcelona, ​​his friends explain, things "weren't going well for him," and he didn't dare tell anyone at home "for fear of disappointing them." Now they've located his brother and informed him of his situation. He's also a healthcare worker and has already traveled to Barcelona to visit him. "He's doing better physically, he's not in as much pain anymore, but he's having a very bad time here," his friends say, pointing to their heads, referring to his mental health.

Although some of the evicted have decided to return to Romania—the country of origin of most of the settlement's inhabitants—a walk through the neighborhood quickly reveals where the rest are. For example, Nicolai continues collecting scrap metal in the neighborhood. "I'm in Carmel, but most are still in Vallcarca," he confirms. Two of the families now live with two other families in a community building just a few meters from the settlement. "When we talk about family, we mean father, mother, children, grandchildren, and also young people and sons-in-law," clarifies José, a member of the Som Barri association, which has supported the residents of the site. Another group is living in an apartment that the housing union is using as a temporary shelter. A fourth family unit is trying to recover in a squatted block, and just a few meters away, another immigrant family has taken in a final group of Romanians who were left homeless by the eviction.

The solutions are not convincing.

Most of those affected worked in the scrap metal business, and therefore, on Thursday, they also lost their warehouse and the materials that helped them survive. "There are also people who have lost their documentation, papers, or passports during the entire eviction," the Moroccan workers explain. They all agree that they have "only" received help from neighbors: "The City Council? Nothing, a few nights in a boarding house or shelter, and that's it," agree the evicted people this newspaper spoke to.

For their part, municipal sources indicate that of the eighteen people present on the day of the eviction, they only had connections with eleven. They were offered emergency accommodation, boarding houses, shelters, or resources for the homeless, in addition to monitoring them through Social Services to find a personalized solution. "Both before and after the eviction, [the resources] have not been accepted by these people," municipal sources point out. "In three cases, which are a family unit, they have also not accepted the offer of emergency temporary accommodation [nights in boarding houses], and Social Services is assisting them in order to register for applicants for social housing [VPO]," they add.

Both those affected and the Vallcarca residents who accompany and advise them explain that they have rejected the resources because they do not solve the problems of these families (some with minor children or grandchildren), but rather destabilize them even further.

In this sense, the accounts of those evicted and those of the City Council are diametrically opposed. These differences become even more evident in relation to the fire victim. Spokespeople for Som Barri and the boy's friends assure that no one from the municipal government has come to see him. The City Council, however, maintains that they have and that "he has been offered a housing solution once he is discharged" within the resources allocated for homelessness. The residents who help this group in the neighborhood explain that they are the ones who have worked to ensure that the boy is transferred to a social-health center "at least while he needs treatment for his burns."

For more than five years, the vacant lot – which now resembles a warehouse of the city's tactical urbanism, full of concrete blocks – had become one of the most socially sensitive spots in the cityMany residents were demanding a decent housing solution for the dozens of families occupying the space and surviving in very precarious conditions, while another section of the neighborhood wanted the immigrants out and accused them of engaging in illegal activities and accumulating filth, which was degrading the neighborhood. According to the latest municipal census, there were currently eighteen people staying overnight in the lot, but more than fifty had been counted.

Far from solving the problem, however, the eviction has centrifuged these people, who have been forced, they say, to occupy other spaces in the neighborhood. "They are there, but now their situation is even more complicated," concludes José de Som Barri.