Spanish police on Wednesday enforced an eviction order to remove an abandoned school north of Barcelona where some 400 illegal immigrants were living.
The vacant school building in Badalona, a working-class city bordering Barcelona, remained abandoned in 2023 and has since become home to many sub-Saharan migrants, mainly from Senegal and Gambia.
Eviction in X’s post.
“As promised, the eviction of 400 squatters from the B9 school in Badalona begins,” he wrote.
Albiol, a member of the conservative People’s Party (PP), has built his political career on an anti-immigration platform.
Aware of the impending midwinter eviction, most of the residents left the squat to seek alternative shelter before officers in riot gear from Catalonia’s regional police force, Mossos d’Esquadra, entered the school grounds in the early hours of the morning in accordance with a court order.
Those who had been waiting quietly left.
The judicial order required Badalona City Hall to provide those evicted with access to social services, but it did not obligate the municipality to find alternative housing for all squatters.
Lawyer Marta Ronchi, who represents the squatters, said many were likely to be left without shelter in the cold.
“A lot of people will be sleeping on the streets tonight,” Ronchi said. “Just because we evict these people doesn’t mean they’re gone. If we don’t give them another place to live, they’re going to be living on the streets and that’s going to be a problem for them and the city.”
Many of the squatters made a living by selling scrap metal collected from the streets. Some people had residence rights and work permits but were forced to live there because the tight cost of living made it difficult for even working Spaniards to buy or rent housing.
The housing crisis sparked widespread social unrest and public protests.
Badalona City Hall had argued that the illegal occupation was a threat to public safety. In 2020, a fire broke out in an old factory in Badalona that housed about 100 migrants, killing four people.
For more than a decade, Spain, like other southern European countries, has seen migrants risking their lives across the Mediterranean and Atlantic Oceans in small boats to reach the country.
While many developed countries have taken hard stances on immigration, Spain’s leftist government insists that legal immigration contributes to economic growth.
Additional sources of information • AP