There is a depersonalized Barceloneta, with happy hour, tourist apartments, liter sangrias and industrial rice dishes. But there is also a Barceloneta paella bar with designation of origin, which resists gentrification and preserves the essence of one of the most peculiar neighborhoods in Barcelona. La Barceloneta, for example, by Angie, the President, who runs a clothing store in the arcades of the neighborhood's municipal market.
The whole neighborhood knows her. From Juani, the sister of actress Loles León, to Chulo and Rick, Montse's dogs, who bark with joy when they pass by her store because they know that Angie always has a treat for them. And a frying pan for Mousa, one of the sub-Saharans who collects scrap metal in these streets. Angie would deserve a report, but she wants the absolute protagonist to be Manuel, another of her neighbors.
Manuel, 64, has a Levitical beard and is sometimes incoherent. But who would be after 10 days on the street, being cold or hot, without privacy, with fear and without a minute of silence? Manuel has not lived like this for ten days, but for ten years. He was a waiter for a long time (“I worked in almost all the bars in the Barcelona metro”) and also served drinks in a brothel in Asturias, where one day he received a blow.
A telegram or a phone call (he doesn't remember well) warned him of the death of his father, to whom he was very close. That day he began his descent into hell. He traveled to Barcelona for the funeral, but did not return to the brothel. He stayed here, on the street. He slept in abandoned warehouses and portals (“ATMs scare me, they are dangerous: if they attack you or want to burn you alive, as has happened, you have no means of escape).
One day, accompanying the Cordobés and his girlfriend, who also lived on the street, he ended up at the door of the Barceloneta municipal market, next to the Caprabo entrance. El Cordobés brazenly asked for alms (“give me a bill for a steak”), although he didn't last long. He and his girl left, but Manuel stayed. Before it was the antithesis of Cordobés. Introverted and serious, except when there was a “beer party.”
It has a totemic phrase that announces the storm and that alludes to the supposed festive customs of a high state official. “When he says it, I know it's better to leave him alone,” says Angie, who assures that those days are becoming more and more infrequent. “There are those who believe that many homeless people are on the streets because they drink when sometimes it is just the opposite: they drink because they are on the streets,” she explains at the Fundació Arrels.
This altruistic entity is a beacon against homelessness. It organizes periodic counts to find out how many people sleep on the streets in the Catalan capital (the last one, on the 13th: at least 1,384, 12% more than last year). There is not enough space on this website to explain everything that Arrels does. The reader can see it here, but it is summarized with only two details from the last course: 3,150 people served and 264 housed.
One of those 264 people is Manuel, who proudly shows the keys to the Free Trade Zone apartment that Arrels gave him a month ago. As long as he lives and complies with the rules, he will have decent housing and will receive the support of educators and volunteers from the foundation. But Manuel does not star in this chronicle for that reason, but because he continues to go almost every day to the Caprabo of the Barceloneta municipal market. Because?
There are many bad things about homelessness. One of the worst is the feeling of invisibility. Four out of ten people who live on the streets in Barcelona have no one to trust. Manuel is living proof of the importance of having someone who cares about us. When he and Angie met, this merchant was the president of the market. He still calls her that. The president.
Angie, who has turned her store into a seismograph of Barceloneta, moved heaven and earth so that the market respected the little corner where Manuel always sits, who even has a magnetic card to use the services (these cards are no longer made: when the new president of the market wants to go to the bathroom, he asks for his). Manuel is one more in the supermarket, in the municipal market stalls and in the Paco bar.
The President, who kept two suitcases for him when he slept wherever she could, calls him if she doesn't see him for two or three days. He has two lockers for his things. Martí, Núria, Laia and Maria, from Arrels, are also keeping an eye on him. Many customers ask him to watch their shopping carts. He runs errands for everyone who asks him. He accompanies a man from the neighborhood with mobility difficulties every time he has to go to the Mar hospital.
During the pandemic, he placed and took down the fences to channel the entry and exit of the public. Sometimes he also lends a hand with the tables on the terraces to Edu, 51 years old, the smile of the Paco bar. Edu, who has given him tremendous displeasure because he will soon be going to live with his parents in the Balearic Islands, knows how to get along with people and immediately discovered a good guy with a suit of armor with a stern expression and the beard of a prophet.
Everyone greets him. Some call him Manuel and others Manolo or José (including the police officers who patrol the neighborhood, who assumed that his first name is José Manuel). He does not correct anyone and stays with the main thing: the greeting or the farewell. He is an expatriate neighbor and whenever he can he returns to Barceloneta from the Free Trade Zone. And if he can't for several days, Angie phones him. "All good?".
That's why it never takes long to come back. He is just another neighbor and needs the smile of the President, Edu and Cristina, another of the Caprabo employees who has been wonderful with him. It is now Arrels who speaks: “Surely you know someone who sleeps on the street in your neighborhood. There are many people who spend days without speaking to anyone and... And a blanket, a snack or just a conversation costs nothing.
