rubyThe asphalt has just finished and a street turns into a dirt track to run parallel to the Anoia river, in Martorell. On both sides, the edges are filled with shacks, covered with plastic, tarpaulins or metal fences that give privacy to everything that happens inside. It is one of the flood prone areas that Civil Protection has detected in Catalonia in its special emergency plan Inuncat. In a scenario in which experts warn that phenomena such as floods or DANA will be more common, who is responsible for ensuring the safety of the people who have settled there? With the law in hand, it is the town councils that have the powers, but they are also the ones that often deny them recognition of residents and registration. “We’re crossing our fingers that nothing ever happens,” admits a former high-ranking Government official, when asked what would happen if floods swept away river banks as has happened in Valencia.
The same question has been asked of different bodies of the Catalan administration. From Civil Protection, to the ACA – the Catalan Water Agency, in charge of river management – or the Ministry of Social Rights: “It’s a municipal competence”, they repeat. For their part, the councils must draw up municipal plans – the Duprocim – even though not all of them have presented them nor do they have specific chapters. In Rubí, with an area of huts by the stream, the document does not even refer to it and the council has avoided, at the behest of the ARA, making any assessment. In Montcada and Reixac, with several settlements in Besòs, they have a protocol planned to alert and evacuate residents: with a pre-recorded wedge, the local police pass through the area warning of the risk, and the municipal pavilion has been marked as a point of concentration
A few weeks ago the president of the Generalitat, Salvador Illa, expressed his concern for the risk posed by the location of campsites in flood zones and announced his intention to review the infrastructures located in critical points. According to the Civil Protection risk map, 10% of Catalans (800,000 people) live in risk areas.
No homelessness data
The problem is that no one knows the extent of slums in Catalonia. There is no map of how many shacks there are, nor how many people live there. It is true that, as the administration points out, this is a highly mobile population, and also, as social workers claim, “these are people who want to be invisible, they don’t want problems”. One of these residents in the barracks area of Anoia first denies that he lives there, visibly uncomfortable and also embarrassed by the conditions in which he has to live. “If not, where am I going?”, he asks walking away.
A trip through the country or a stroll along the banks of the rivers reveals the existence of slums that were thought to have been overcome. There are several causes that explain this phenomenon: the succession of crises, the skyrocketing apartment prices and the difficulties for undocumented migrants to rent an apartment. In many cases, the shacks have been converted into housing (legally, sub-housing) as the vegetable garden has been abandoned. It has happened in Martorell, where these orchards still coexist, with workshops, riding stables and shacks out of sheer necessity. And also around the Rubí stream, where the historic flood of September 1962 caused hundreds of deaths (there is no official figure) among the people who had settled in the shacks.
From the Ministry of Social Rights, the new Secretary of Social Affairs and Families, Carolina Homar, emphasizes the fact that, although the competence is municipal, “it would be necessary to make a map” to have an approximation of homelessness and shantytowns in Catalonia and, to be able to act with knowledge of the cause. The 2022 homelessness deal empowers councils to count people living on the streets. With the provisional data collected for that year, there are 4,691 people, a figure that is not well adjusted. Next year the department plans to evaluate the results, although not all councils have provided the data.
Despite the fact that the ARA has verified the shantytowns along the Anoia, the mayor, Xavier Fonollosa, assures that there is no settlement in the municipality. The one of Martorell is one of the councils pointed out by the grievance union and the social entities for breaching the local regime law and denying the register to those who do not have a rental contract, despite the fact that the register is “only a register of people who live in the municipality”, mandatory both for the administration and for the administered, insist from the Network of Entities for the Register, formed among others by Amnesty International, Confavc, or the Forum of Local Trustees. This platform puts on the table a consequence of making this population invisible: “It cannot be that people who live in worse situations find themselves, as in the case of Valencia, without being able to ask for any help because they are not registered in the municipalities where they really live.” At this point, Luisa Fernanda Pinto, representative of the housing mission of the Barcelona Metropolitan Strategic Plan (PEMB), points out the “difficulty of supporting” this population if anything were to happen. “They would be dead to anyone,” he says.
Homelessness and, therefore, shantytowns is a phenomenon that bothers all administrations. And, even when the wolf’s ears have been seen in Valencia, none of the organizations consulted point to a review of protocols. In Montcada and Reixac, the 400 people who live in shacks (half registered in Barcelona and the Valais city), next to gardens and workshops, have been waiting for a solution for years, points out José Luis Conejero, of the Neighborhood Coordinator of the Down Kisses After the death of a couple in a shack, the Generalitat, the Consorci del Besòs and the City Council themselves have pledged to present a plan, but, after eight reports, there is still no timetable and it is estimated that only cleaning the neighborhood will cost three million euros. However, for them the last concern is that a flood is coming. “We are very far from the river,” they answer.
Be aware of the risk
On the other hand, for physicist Carme Llasat, director of the Adverse Weather Situation Analysis Group at the University of Barcelona, ”awareness of the real danger” is one of the lessons to be learned from the catastrophe of DANA. “Because one day the flood will come”, he adds, and points out that information work should be done on the dangers of settling on the banks of rivers or, even in areas where the same law of the water forbids it. “Not everything that has been built in risk areas is illegal, because the councils have given permits,” he says. To the lessons learned, he adds the decisions to be made: “We need to make an appeal to find out where the settlements are, and surely the councils cannot do it alone.”
In any case, both Homar and Pinto indicate that the shacks are the expression of the lack of housing. Homar claims that it is a complex “global problem” with a very difficult solution. From the PEMB, Pinto indicates that in Catalonia only 2% of homes are officially protected, a percentage, however, that Martorell, Rubí and Montcada multiply by a lot. For this reason, he also emphasizes that it is necessary to widen the focus to observe how the law on foreigners or the violation of rights condemns people to settle in shacks, which, although they are not dignified or safe, are the only alternative they have .
