BadalonaThe director of Càritas de Barcelona, Eduard Sala, has called to “rebuild bridges” in order to find a solution for the hundred people evicted last week from the old B9 institute in Badalona and who survive in a makeshift camp under the C-31 highway bridge. Hours after a small group of local residents prevented the opening of the Mare de Déu de Montserrat parish so that 15 people could spend the night there, the head of the diocesan organization has indicated that the alliance of social entities and the Department of Social Rights and Inclusion are holding meetings throughout the day today to find new spaces available for the temporary and emergency reception of the most vulnerable of this group.
Faced with the shouts and insults uttered by those gathered against the evicted migrants, Sala has asked for calm and has attributed the neighborhood tension to the increase in social precariousness, which affects one in four Catalans. “There is a rivalry between the precarious against the more precarious”, he emphasized in a conversation with the ARA, in which he acknowledged that the residents of degraded neighborhoods “feel abandoned by the institutions and the entities themselves”. For this reason, he states that it is necessary for all the actors working to attend to those expelled from the B9 to “sit at the table” and continue the dialogue. “It would be unfair to say that all the summoned neighbors are racists, in the same way as it is to accuse the residents of B9 of being criminals,” said Sala, who affirms that without common efforts “we will not get away with it”.
After the attempt to house 15 people in the parish ceded by the Archbishop failed, the social entities have been trying to find a stable solution all day. The idea is to be able to reopen the church with all the safety conditions for those staying and the technicians, but the search for new services is also continuing “without putting anyone in danger”, insists Sala.
For weeks, the entities and the ministry have been working together to locate available spaces with conditions to accommodate the largest number of people. But it is not easy because the vulnerable population is constantly growing due, in part, to difficulties in meeting housing costs and low wages. The offer of residential places that the entities have is collapsed due to the high demand and there is a long waiting list of groups that are also vulnerable. All kinds of premises have been analysed, even parish offices, which have been discarded because they did not meet a minimum of conditions.
