Life is a coin tossed. I discovered it one cold night in 2014. The drama of the homeless does not occur only when temperatures drop. The Arrels Fundació cries out in the desert every year to demand that, in the same way that there is a Cold operation that helps the homeless in winter, there is also a Heat operation in summer. But that morning it was very cold and…
And I decided to wander aimlessly to see how the most disinherited of the disinherited weathered the storm: the thousand people who sleep rough every night in Barcelona. "If you were born for a hammer, nails will fall from heaven," sings Blades. Life, currency. Face and you have a house, work... Cruz and you are one of those thousand people. And if you were, you would kiss the feet of C-arlos Rodríguez, the man in the photo.
After hours and hours searching unsuccessfully for some sign, I discovered a group of people distributing blankets, bags of food, and thermoses of soup and milk around the Sants station. They were members of Sense Sostre, which at the time boasted of being “the smallest NGO in the world”. The covid ended his days, not his example.
Sense Sostre was a small boat along with ocean liners such as the Red Cross, Cáritas, the Food Bank or the aforementioned Arrels Fundació... Like all these entities, Sense Sostre aspired to stop sailing. To be unnecessary. But it has ceased to exist when it was most needed. It was not a voluntary decision, but forced by the coronavirus and other causes. Most of his volunteers were older, at-risk people.
They stopped making their weekly departure when the state of alarm was decreed. There were more than 50 guardian angels. They performed regularly every Tuesday night. They were in three cars and divided the city into three routes. They distributed at least 150 batches of food each day: rations of consommé, sandwiches, fruits, dairy products, juices and pieces of pastries. For many people, those foods were the only ones of the day.
When the cold returns, perhaps another journalist will wonder how the most disinherited of the disinherited will weather the storm. But you won't be as lucky as I was. You will be able to see other NGOs in action, other hearts of solidarity, but not those of Sense Sostre. They have had no choice but to lower the sails definitively.
The world is a little worse today than yesterday, more unstable. It was such a minuscule NGO that her goodbye did not arouse headlines in the press. It was such a gigantic NGO that its goodbye will take time to digest in the streets. His departure was especially noticeable on New Year's Eve or on Three Kings, when there were no gifts (t-shirts, socks, a hat) or bags with nougats and polvorones at the ATMs. They also did things like that.
They are normal people. The homeless, we mean. The members of Sense Sostre, too. Sometimes, however, their friends would ask if they were afraid. At night, in the Barcelona that nobody wants to see, alone, with their yellow dungarees. The world turned upside down, they answered, who know that the ones who are truly afraid are the others, the ones who have gotten used to being invisible and need a hand on the shoulder.
One of the co-founders of the project was Carlos Rodríguez, 80 years old and already retired. Retired comes from jubilation. He is the proof. More than 15 years ago, together with a friend, he embarked on an adventure: two volunteers, a car and 25 snacks. At three in the morning there were still many to distribute. They did not give up and continued to dedicate one night a week to alleviate the loneliness of the homeless.
The hand on the shoulder and the hug were as important or more important than the bag of food. They knew that they gave a fish, not rods or fishing courses, but they also knew that for many people their visit was providential. And, as long as the rods and the fishing courses do not arrive, the fish are still necessary. Little by little, the volunteers and the donations were growing. And then came the shipwreck, the pandemic.
The volunteers were leaving, tired of waiting for a return to normality or because common sense advised that they not take risks given their age and health ailments. Many companies that made donations closed or had to restrict their aid due to inactivity and lower income. The City Council also tightened the health regulations on the solidarity distribution of food on the street.
There is not enough space here to praise those who fight against homelessness. Not even to applaud this NGO and those that existed before or those that will exist after. More than a thousand people sleep rough in Barcelona. Let's say it again: over a thousand people remind us every day that sometimes life is a coin toss. What would have happened to us if tails had come up?
The bags of food and the letters with messages of encouragement were the perfect excuse for the homeless to know that they are not alone, that not everyone looks the other way. Carlos Rodríguez once explained to me that a big man pounced on one of his fellow travelers one night. For a thousandth of a second, they doubted and were afraid, but that man just wanted to hug them and thank them because they had saved him. To him and to all of us. To humanity.
This report updates the version that was published on the Comer channel on Friday, January 21, 2022.
