Immigrants sleeping rough in Lleida, most waiting for a farmer to hire them to pick fruit. It is a frequent image these days in the Center Històric of Lleida. “It’s like the hamster wheel, we’ve been like this for twenty years, they arrive in May and the municipal reception facility opens in June,” says the director of the Fundació Arrels Sant Ignasi, Rosa Majoral. Three weeks ago she noticed that the foundation’s showers were beginning to fill up and more people were going to look for food.
At night, they are seen sleeping in Plaça del Dipòsit, on Galera street, on Suda and Sant Andreu streets or on Ereta. Until Wednesday, some were sleeping at the door of the Sant Martí church. They can’t do it anymore. The Urban Guard prevents it.
They moved to the stairs at the foot of the Seu Vella, near Camp de Mart street. About 60 people, most of them Senegalese, spent the night there on Thursday. Among them, some homeless people who are not looking for employment in the fruit. They also reach other areas. That same night several groups of Senegalese were looking for a place to sleep in the Camps Elisis. “We’ve been on our feet all day, without food,” said one of them. He arrived from the Basque Country, he has been in Spain for 14 years and does not have a work permit. He doesn’t want photos. He wants to prevent his mother from seeing him.
Many of the new arrivals have met Matar Mbay, a Senegalese who has been in Lleida for seven years. He was a truck driver and has a disability due to an accident. He often volunteers at the Red Cross. “With my money I bought chicken and rice for them to eat, but there are many,” he said on Thursday in the church of Sant Martí, where eight countrymen were waiting for him to go to the foot of the Seu Vella. He brought one a mattress. To another, who had just arrived from Barcelona from Tenerife, whose suitcase had been stolen by some Moroccans, he gave a blanket, three pants and two shirts. Many have not yet worked on the campaign. Their hope is that those who already work will call them when the farmer for whom they pick fruit asks them to bring “some friend.”
Difficult months are coming for the residents of the Center Històric. Oscar Lanza is spokesperson for the Som Veïns platform: “They are people with hygienic and physiological needs and they do them in the neighborhood.” “It is common,” he adds, “to see immigrants without a place to sleep brush their teeth or wash their clothes in fountains.” And he also says that the Urban Guard has an unofficial “wake-up service for seasonal workers.” “There where they detect that they are sleeping – he explains – the urban residents go to wake them up at six in the morning, before the city gets going, so that they do not see each other.”
The association insists that the Socialist-governed City Council has lost the opportunity to build the shelter that ERC approved in Pardinyes. The mayor, Fèlix Larrosa, rejected the shelter and opted to propose accommodation for temporary workers in Horta. This year the City Council will launch its “device to welcome passers-by during the agricultural season” on June 3 in a pavilion at Fira de Lleida.
On Friday, the City Council noted that, “given the sudden arrival of people, around fifteen places have initially been activated in apartments of the municipal company of Urban Agenda of Lleida that serve to accommodate temporary workers during the campaign.” “We are working on collecting data from people who sleep on the street to determine if they meet the criteria to access these places,” he stressed.
The Comú of Lleida considers it “intolerable” that the Fira pavilion does not open until June, “being aware on the part of the government that it is during May when a considerable number of temporary workers begin to arrive.” Along the same lines, Fruita amb Justícia Social, denounces the “inaction” of the Paeria and the Generalitat to resolve the lack of accommodation for temporary people.
These days the granting of subsidies from the Generalitat for private accommodation for seasonal workers hired in agricultural campaigns has been signed. Frutalsa, with 150,000 euros, and Fruits de Ponent, with 119,000, are some of the beneficiary companies.
