Slowly and with difficulties, but two days after the eviction of the El Barco building in Esplugues de Llobregat, the City Council is beginning to relocate the affected residents in medium-term housing alternatives. For those who have not yet been found an apartment, emergency care is being improved by moving from a hostel in Barcelona to hotels or aparthotels, as explained by the first deputy mayor, Eduard Sanz, this Wednesday at a press conference.
Sanz said that on Tuesday night a family of four was already able to sleep in another apartment in Esplugues. In addition, he has reported that two more families will have another property in the same town today after being able to provide the homes with basic supplies such as electricity.
The first deputy mayor has promised twelve more apartments at the disposal of residents in the coming days. "Some will be in Esplugues, others in Barcelona and others in l'Hospitalet de Llobregat," he said. One of the main demands of the neighbors affected by the eviction is to continue living in Esplugues so as not to break their family structure. "It is a medium-term solution, two or three months, until a definitive one is found," said Sanz.
But more people lived in El Barco who paid their rent to the City Council, owner of the dilapidated building for less than a year after a forced expropriation that dragged on over time. Specifically 38 families and in fact there are four people who refuse to leave the house. Thus, municipal efforts are still far from sufficient to relocate everyone. "We are assuming slightly high prices. Today, this medium-term alternative is being paid by the City Council," said the first deputy mayor. He is going to the market and collaborating with nearby town councils and the Hàbitat3 foundation.
That is why he has once again demanded help from the Generalitat of Catalonia, with powers in the field of housing: "A City Council has the resources it has. That is why I am making this call. We are having difficulties finding housing, as the market is. "I don't want to create conflict, but they have to collaborate and at the moment they tell us that they don't have apartments available."
The City Council maintains that Monday's eviction was precipitated by a technical report that decreed the risk of collapse, but that both they and the neighbors knew that in the medium term El Barco was destined for the picket as it was built in a green area according to the Plan Metropolitan General (PGM) of 1976.
In this context, there are many residents who have disfigured the City Council's ways and that the urgent alternative to spend the first days was a hostel in Barcelona. "If yesterday we had 40 people sleeping in the shelter, tonight we have gone to three," said Sanz. "We have 14 families in hotels or aparthotels and 16 who have preferred to resort to their family network," he concluded.
