Badalona homeless settlement has expanded to nearly one hundred people living under a motorway bridge after their eviction from the former B9 school.

Volunteers from private organisations distributed food for Christmas Eve dinner under the C-31 motorway.

“I haven’t been able to buy milk to feed my daughter for four days,” said Ousmane.

Since the municipal facility was cleared, he can’t go out to collect scrap metal from the streets.

Badalona Homeless Settlement Faces Harsh Conditions

The settlement has grown over the past week. More homeless people from the city have arrived, even those who weren’t previously at B9.

By 26 December, nearly one hundred tents were struggling against strong winds from the storm hitting the Catalan coast.

“We’re lucky they help us with food,” commented Mamadou, a young Gambian man who’s slept in this part of the street for a week. But conditions are dire. The large road infrastructure provides some protection from the first impact of rain, but leaks are abundant.

Organisations like Cuineres per la Pau and the Unió per les Segones Oportunitats work tirelessly to meet basic needs. Neighbourhood association members also collaborate. For toilet facilities, refugees try to use services in nearby bars and restaurants. But many only allow toilet access to paying customers.

Among the painful conditions, Said finds space to look back. He acknowledges the settlement caused many problems for neighbours. He also knows there were “people who stole, and people who were robbed” inside B9.

“The conditions here are strictly about survival,” denounced Sagués. When speaking about the Generalitat’s “gesture,” Sagués refers to the night of 23 December. They offered an alternative to the approximately 140 people then sheltering under the viaduct.

They barely had a few minutes to explain the operation to those affected. Finally, about 30 people sheltering under the bridge were rehoused on 23 December in other assistance resources.

Some feared not being able to carry their meagre belongings. Others worried about ending up in cities far from the Barcelona area where they’d lose their already very precarious network of contacts in Badalona. This is clarified by both social entities and Younouss Drame himself, one of those expelled from B9.

In this regard, Badalona mayor Xavier García Albiol has stated that housing alternatives have been offered to about 50 or 60 evicted from B9 who still need rehousing. According to the mayor, the evicted don’t want to leave their street situation “because they say the alternative doesn’t suit them.

On 24 December, another joint operation took place, this time more discreetly, explain sources from the Department of Social Rights. The entities working on the ground do provide numbers. The situation highlights ongoing challenges in addressing homelessness in the metropolitan area. It follows other recent incidents of social tension, such as when Diagonal Avenue was blocked during rush hour by a protest earlier this year.

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