B9, a former institute in Badalona, is the closest thing to a home for hundreds of migrants. Always forced to move by expulsion – from colony to warehouse, from warehouse to premises – they had found a more or less stable refuge in the old high school classrooms. But nothing is forever. After more than two years there, they return to the path of poverty. On Wednesday, Badalona City Hall carried out with judicial approval one of the largest collective evictions in Spain, although only half of the 400 people who transformed B9 into Catalonia’s largest informal settlement, an autonomous city within the city, remained. The vast majority were left on the streets, without any alternative from the public authorities and without this seeming to worry too much the administrations, starting with the local administration, which approached the issue as a crime problem.
“You kicked us out of the house for that?” Is this the image you want? » Friday, Mamadou confronted the police who came to dismantle the open-air camp that around a hundred occupants had set up with tents after the expulsion. On Saturday, the tents were set up again, but under the C-31 highway, which divides the city, to protect against heavy rains. The feeling of abandonment of B9 migrants, a symbol of extreme poverty which takes root, silently, on the margins, is absolute. They do not understand the expulsion of an establishment that they had appropriated, with all its faults and its conflicts: they provided themselves with water and electricity, set up common spaces and transformed the classrooms into bedrooms.
Badalona Town Hall wants to build a police station on this now empty and guarded land. But the project will take a long time. The pretext for evicting them, according to Mayor Xavier Garcia Albiol (PP), was the alleged problems of coexistence and insecurity that they were causing to neighbors. Albiol, which governs the third Catalan city in terms of inhabitants by an absolute majority, has lumped in the same bag (that of delinquency) a group of 400 people where various realities coexist: undocumented immigrants who earn their living by collecting scrap metal; authorized workers who, however, cannot afford an apartment or room; foreigners recently arrived from other parts of Spain for whom the B9 was a welcome place; and also, people with crimes behind them, with mental health problems, weakened by the consumption of toxic substances.
The management of the B9 expulsion reveals that security and respect for the law prevailed over a more social approach. The judge authorized the entry of the Town Hall into the premises on the basis of a report from the Urban Guard noting incidents that had occurred in B9 and its surroundings since the summer, including the murder of a resident at the hands of another suffering from mental illness. Beyond Albiol, the Generalitat defended the necessity of the expulsion because “we must respect the laws” and the judicial “mandate”, as said by the president of the Generalitat, Salvador Illa, who asked to “take care of all those who need to be cared for”.
The Government, however, clarified that the attention paid to those expelled was the responsibility of Albiol. The Minister of Social Rights, Mònica Martíne Bravo, urged him to reopen a municipal shelter (Can Bofí Vell) which closed during his mandate and which would be used to urgently accommodate some of the evicted people. In a letter, the advisor adds that social entities (Càritas, Red Cross) are working to find a solution. The government delegate in Catalonia, Carlos Prieto, did not spare criticism and declared that the mayor had “neglected his duties”. But Albiol revolted: he accused the Generalitat of not wanting to help him and invited the president of the government to take responsibility for the solution himself: “Let Pedro Sánchez find them accommodation,” he declared.
“Getting wet for them doesn’t give you a voice”
In a context of maximum political polarization, where the debate around immigration has hardened under pressure from the far right, B9 migrants are more alone than ever, according to the organizations that support them. In another context, leaving 400 people on the street in the middle of winter and without offering them alternatives would have been a scandal. No more. Beyond the responsibility of the powers, no administration has rolled up its sleeves to find a solution, affirm those who, voluntarily, have lent a hand these days.
“Albiol tells you that it is not going to help you. The Generalitat tells you that it will, but it does not take a step forward; the words are different, but the actions less so”, explains Carles Sagués, activist for the right to housing and accustomed to numerous evictions in the Sant Roc district, where the institute is located, one of the poorest in Catalonia. Sagués played a mediating role and sought solutions, but believes that, this time, politicians from almost all parties “have difficulty getting involved in favor of everyone, without distinctions, because that does not give a voice.” The activist believes, however, that Albiol “has gone too far” and that the government will have to act to resolve the situation. This Saturday precisely, the Generalitat announced an agreement with social entities to provide temporary night accommodation to those evicted, from 8:00 p.m. Around 8 a.m., thanks to an emergency device, which she did not detail.
And the situation, more than complicated, is volatile, unpredictable, painful. Younouss, a Senegalese who became spokesperson for B9, warned: “We are not going to disappear even if they throw us out.” At first, we do not know what happened to the 400 inhabitants. About 200 days before the expulsion and among them, according to the City Council, 150 are no longer in Badalona and, in all probability, have taken refuge in other colonies, warehouses or premises in the metropolitan area. Of the other 200, more or less half (around a hundred) settled in a square a few meters from the institute just after being expelled. They spent two nights camped there until Friday they were ordered to dismantle their tents under threat of force. They obeyed, but warned that they would do it again because they had to sleep somewhere. Yesterday on the highway. Tomorrow we will see.
Looking for a roof
This new open-air settlement left scenes of misery, with people sleeping in the streets, protected from the cold by bonfires on the sidewalk. The image caught the attention of the UN. The rapporteurs for the right to housing consider the eviction “a serious violation” of fundamental freedoms and denounce the “stigmatizing discourse” of the group. But these scenes will most likely repeat themselves because there is still no alternative. Badalona only “temporarily” accommodated 17 people (particularly vulnerable or sick) and placed 50 others under the supervision of social services, without them receiving effective help. There is no capacity (the municipality recognized this in a report to the judge) nor, above all, political will to provide a housing resource.
For many, the departure of the B9 is not the first that they have experienced in the flesh. Some of them lived in the nearby warehouse in the Gorg neighborhood which, in December 2020, suffered a fire that killed five people. Mamaru is one of them and exercised a certain leadership there, even if he denies it. “There are many of us and it is very difficult to coordinate so many opinions,” he explains, but insists that only with the help of the community is it possible to survive in such difficult conditions. “If black people don’t come together, they’ll kill them all. They still call us ‘black criminals,’ but they give us reason to be criminals. And we’re going to keep looking for a life.”
Mamaru and the others, the most vulnerable of the vulnerable, must once again look for shelter. They only hope that if they find a warehouse to occupy or a plot of land to camp in, the administration will be at least as quiet and discreet as it was when it attended to their needs after the eviction.
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