If you live in Barcelona or one of the cities in its conurbation or you suffer from it or are surrounded by poverty. More and more residents are going through serious hardships to get to the end of the month covering their basic needs or they don't make it at all. Against the indifference to this reality, Càritas has put figures on the problem this Friday: they attended 35,414 people in the year 2022. There have never been so many so far in the 21st century, as explained by its director, Salvador Busquets.
This is reflected in the annual report of Càritas Barcelona and can be seen in the graph below, which reaches up to the year 2009. The data covers the Catalan capital but also towns such as l'Hospitalet de Llobregat, Cornellà de Llobregat, Badalona or Sant Adrià de Besòs, among others, reaching a radius of action of towns totaling 2.7 million residents.
Busquets has acknowledged that they expected the figure to drop after the pandemic. But it has not been that way. The crises are chained: from the explosion of the real estate bubble that began in 2008 to the current inflation and the war in Ukraine through the covid. And many people are staying on the road.
"We believed in an effect of measures such as the minimum vital income," said Busquets. "Many of the people we serve come from countries in conflict," she added. "We are the critical look at reality, but from a purposeful point of view, with proposals for improvement and we are also helping hands", remarked the Cardinal Archbishop of Barcelona and President of Càritas, Joan Josep Omella.
Miriam Feu, head of social analysis and advocacy at Càritas Barcelona, has recounted the main causes of this increase in the number of people served by the institution: several economic crises have been linked in recent years, the eternal problems of access to housing and a decent work and, furthermore, people in a situation of administrative irregularity have serious problems to regularize it.
In this sense, 49% of the people cared for by Càritas Barcelona are in an irregular administrative situation. There are 8 points more than in 2021. Almost half of the residents who seek help from the association come from Colombia, Peru, Honduras, Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia
And to regularize the administrative situation, one of the most important steps is to obtain the register. It is one of the keys to be able to achieve attention from public administrations. In Barcelona, a fixed address is not required to process it. A situation that, according to the director of Càritas Barcelona, "is an oasis in the metropolitan area of Barcelona".
"We fight with most of the city councils and many times we do not achieve the objectives. It is like a fish that bites its tail. People who reside in other towns arrive in Barcelona and a collapse is taking place. The law must be the same for everyone You live in Barcelona or in another municipality in the metropolitan area", remarked Salvador Busquets.
