Chronic poverty, political disaffection, marginalization, high unemployment rate, high rate of school absenteeism and home invasion... Sant Roc's problems are so visible that no one sees them. This neighborhood of Badalona was born in the sixties to house the shantytowners of metropolitan Barcelona and, above all, of Montjuïc and the Somorrostro beach, “where on stormy days the waves reached the shacks”.
Mrs. Vicenta, 86, carries a shopping cart, although she is not going to buy ("I use it as a tacataca, you know?"). She closes her eyes and remembers those days of waves when she would get out of bed and the floor of the substandard home of her parents and her eight siblings was wet. “It hadn't rained and it wasn't leaking. It was sea water!” Sant Roc also welcomed those displaced by the great Besòs flood of 1962.
It has taken an unusual succession of group sexual assaults (at least eight in the last eleven months, committed mostly by minors against minors) to awaken media interest in this neighborhood. The crimes have not taken place here, although many attackers and some victims are from here, which has led to an unprecedented landing of journalists in search of immediate answers.
"And we don't have answers," says the economist and educator Mario Cuixart, 45, who has worked on the streets for more than 20 years, now in the ranks of the Germina Foundation, which offers opportunities to the most vulnerable children and youth ("we are neighborhood: we strengthen the community" is their motto). This non-profit organization does not work in Sant Roc, but does work in Santa Coloma de Gramenet and on the border with Badalona, in Lloreda-La Pau.
The Germina Foundation is an excellent seismograph. Months ago, he began to perceive a growing macho aggressiveness in children of 11 years of age or even less: "If I'm not a macho, I'm nobody." Do these attitudes explain group aggression? "We don't know and we don't believe there is a single reason," says Mario Cuixart. Some have pointed to easy access to increasingly violent porn that objectifies women.
“Does that imply a cause-effect relationship? My opinion is that we still do not have enough perspective to know what has happened”, adds this educator. But if the origin of the problem is not known, a solution is known: resources. And in Badalona there are none. When an early misogynist from Santa Coloma appears on his radar, the foundation sends him to a municipal center with psychologists to prevent greater evils. That does not exist in Badalona.
David Torrents himself, from Junts, until now councilor for Social Services, acknowledges that this area "is overwhelmed" and denounces that the Generalitat "has forgotten about the city" with the reduction, paralysis or non-payment of planned aid. Social exclusion and 40% school absenteeism are characteristics of Sant Roc, says this mosso d'esquadra on leave of absence, who is considering re-entry after his non-reelection.
Another notable hallmark is political pasotismo. In numerous votes, participation in the neighborhood does not even reach 40%. In the 2019 general elections, 90% of the census of a polling station on Alfons XII street, the epicenter of housing occupations and the old Sant Roc, as opposed to the young Sant Roc, with more renovations of flats with aluminosis and more real estate developments.
That electoral lack of interest did not attract the press either. “We only make the news when there are drug busts or gang rapes. Never for positive things”, laments Enric Marín, 70, a retired bank employee and social activist from the Sant Roc Som Badalona platform. Other neighborhood leaders, like Diego Justicia, politely decline to speak for fear of further stigmatizing the area.
A historic beacon of inclusion, the Ateneu Sant Roc, which has promoted community, educational, social and leisure projects for half a century, is another speaker that has opted for silence. In a fire, you need water drums, not gasoline, says Salva Figuerola, director and cultural facilitator. And the fact that the perpetrators of the attacks belong to a certain community is very flammable.
“The presumption of innocence does not work with gypsies: we are guilty until proven otherwise,” ironically Manuel Cortés Cortés, 70, from los Manueles, president of the Badalona Intercultural Neighborhood Association. "There are many ethnic groups here," he says. His entity is dedicated to building bridges between all of them, especially with Pakistanis, the second largest minority in the neighborhood.
The first is yours, the Roma “Do you know what our ID was with Franco? Hands! If you had calluses, the Civil Guard understood that you worked and the law of Vagrants and Crooks did not apply to you ”, complains this former street vendor. What will journalists who are looking for answers to questions that have lingered for years? Will they look at the hands of all the gypsies, and not only the parents of the minors who were attacked?
“Drugs, low rents, underground economy… There are problems here, like everywhere else. But the big problem is that the city lives with its back to us. That is why the Sant Roc Platform is called Som Badalona", explains Enric Marín, who declares himself to be on the left and "fervent supporter of the Guaranteed Income of Citizenship, but not of the chronification of poverty or of grandchildren living on grandmother's allowances ”.
Sexual violence is terrible, and even more so with minor victims and defendants, “but the crimes are not committed because they are gypsies. Not for being poor. There are also rich who rape! Because you are poor you are not good, in the same way that because you are rich you are not bad, but both do not have the same opportunities. What neighborhood allows school absenteeism like ours?” says this member of the Plataforma Sant Roc Som Badalona.
And the eternal reproach: the good is almost never talked about. Nor of the evictions that Enric Marín and his colleagues avoid, of the people they convince to regularize their supplies, of the social rents that they obtain for those who resorted to the mafias to kick in the door if they wanted a roof. "If we can, the Administration could too, but it prefers pensions and shelters, patches instead of solutions."
The neighbors get ahead as they can. The premises of the Agrupación Caló de Badalona have several uses. “We also upholster furniture”, someone has written by hand. The streets teem with life. In other neighborhoods, bicycles are seen chained and padlocked to benches or bins. Here you can see folding or plastic chairs that nobody thinks of taking home because they spend more time there, on public roads, than anywhere else.
Find out if a teenager is asking the community police for a mortgage. The physique can be deceiving. Many do not have ID and do not give facilities, nor their parents. “And then there are the bonfires from the containers,” explains the evangelical pastor José Luis Martínez, from the Jesus, life and freedom church. “In addition to being a pastor, I am self-employed. Electrician and welder. The car is a tool and I never park next to containers out of fear”.
In the street Santa Joana de Lestonnac a van burned days ago. And there it continues. The police believe they have put a stop to these excesses. There is an unspoken agreement: the agents only turn a blind eye to the nightly bonfires if they are for the wake of a member of the community. Pastor Martínez and fifty of his faithful cleaned Alfons XII street yesterday to encourage civility, but his action did not arouse media interest.
The mediations of the Intercultural Association are not newsworthy either. Most of the supermarkets are from Pakistanis. Once there was a scuffle with the owner of one, in the old Sant Roc. The gypsies took revenge by emptying the shelves without paying anything. "Even the cash register was taken away," jokes Manuel Cortés. He and a Pakistani from his entity intervened and calmed things down. The looters paid 9,000 euros.
A graffiti on the façade of the Catholic parish of Sant Roc (Avenida del Maresme, 139) pays homage to Bertolt Brecht: “There are people who fight one day and are good. Others fight for a year and are better. But there are those who fight all their lives: those are the essential ones”. In this neighborhood there are many people like that. The ones in this report are an example. The Ateneu de Sant Roc summons the press for September, when the waters have calmed down, if by then "Sant Roc continues to be of interest to you".
