A group of people evicted this week from the former B9 institute in Badalona spent Friday night taking refuge under an exit of the C-31, in the Sant Roc neighborhood, after the Urban Guard prohibited them from setting up tents in the square where they had gathered after the eviction.
The city’s mayor, Xavier García Albiol, assured that he would order the removal of tents to prevent “the consolidation of a camp”, although he declared that he would act with “the left hand” due to the rains affecting the area. “The occupation of public space cannot be normalized,” he said in statements to Race1.
The intense rains in the early morning of this Friday and the police presence dispersed the fifty people who remained around the old center, evacuated on Wednesday with a vast police operation celebrated by the mayor. Many of them, mostly migrants, sought shelter in other areas of Badalona, under the road bridge, as well as in nearby gates and fields.
The Socialist Housing Union of Catalonia denounces “police harassment” and warns that those evicted “cannot disappear”. The eviction of B9, where nearly 400 people lived, sparked criticism from UN rapporteurs for the right to housing and for the rights of migrants, who called the operation a “serious violation” of fundamental freedoms.
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