Fifty residents of the Venus block in the Mina neighborhood in Sant Adrià de Besòs have followed the example of another 50 residents who in 2019 filed a suit for property claims against the Consorci de la Mina, in which the Generalitat, the Provincial Council and the town councils of Barcelona and Sant Adrià de Besòs. They consider the 20-year delay in executing the expropriation and demolition project of the building to be unjustifiable, which further aggravates the problems of marginality, exclusion, crime and unhealthiness.
The 50 families claim the 5,000 euros that the Consorci initially offered them, but they ask for 10,000 euros more for each year of delay in the Special Mine Reform Plan (PERM), which keeps them in a state of maximum precariousness. The plan was approved by the Comissió Territorial d'Urbanisme more than 20 years ago and contemplated a series of actions to regenerate the area. Despite this, the Venus block is still standing and the families are subjected to “subhuman living conditions,” says lawyer Mariona Torra, from the Col·lectiu Ronda, who represents those affected.
One of the actions agreed upon in the PERM was the expropriation of the homes to promote the integration of families in other homes in the metropolitan area of Barcelona. However, El Consorci refused to address the neighbors' allegations in relation to the appraisal of the value of their homes and the impossibility of paying the payments required of them to qualify for other apartments, an amount that a few years ago was around 30,000 euros. The inaction of the Consorci is, according to the neighbors, “a serious breach” of the commitments acquired in 2009, which required the file to be brought before the Expropriations Jury of Catalonia. Inaction, therefore, has led to the paralysis of the urgent measures that the neighborhood needed to adopt focused on its regeneration.
The 50 pioneer neighbors in suing the Consorci three years ago obtained a favorable ruling from the TSJC that recognized that the neighbors' rights had been violated. The administration was sentenced to reactivate the demolition of the block, following an expropriation process. As a result of the judicial punishment, an increase in the valuation of the apartments was set, amounting to 97,450 for those with three bedrooms and 121,514 for those with four.
The neighbors' lawyer now accuses the Consortium of "condemning the neighbors to live in a space that violates the dignity of people" and demands that the judge's commitment be fulfilled and that "the new expropriation process be promoted." . Torra states that “it cannot be tolerated that a project be shelved for more than 20 years for a purely economic issue.”
