Living on the street and enduring temperatures, some days, of more than 40 degrees. Leo Vindrel goes every day to the open center of Arrels in Lleida Sant Ignasi, on Panera street to take refuge from the heat and take a nap between one and half past four. It is the first year that the center functions as a climate refuge. 17 people come during the week and 25 on weekends. Most of the people are users of the open center, some have also come from the Red Cross.
It is a pilot project for which Arrels has asked for donations to reach the 10,000 euros it needs to maintain the service all summer. The project has welcomed people who are already users of other services of the social foundation.
Leo is Romanian. He has not always done badly, for a time he had an aloe vera import company in Pobla de Montornés. Then came financial difficulties.
He arrived in Lleida last year and slept for a few seasons in the Jericó hostel, on Calle Tallada. Although she got a job – she is now on sick leave due to a work accident – she has not managed to recover financially and sleeps where she can, the last few weeks around the church of Sant Llorens.
The opening of the center at noon as a climate refuge, before it closed at two, has allowed him to spend almost the entire day in the facilities. “I take a nap, you can shower, we have a little room, I feel well treated, it’s perfect. Having a place to be when the sun is strongest is what is most needed”, says Leo accompanied.
“During the midday hours we set up the multipurpose space so they can sleep and we keep the air conditioning in the living room for people who arrive to take refuge from the heat, adds Hafida Ouali, a social worker from Arrels.
A few days ago, Álvaro, a young man who usually goes to the center, said that he went because he couldn’t enter the shelter where he was sleeping until two o’clock and he didn’t want to be lying in the street. “In the situation I find myself in, it is very good for me to cover myself from the heat, also if I have a need; Like a shower, clothes, being comfortable in the living room or reading the newspaper, I can do it and that’s how I take refuge.
For a month now, the center has been open from half past nine in the morning to half past seven in the evening, including weekends. The idea began to take shape last summer, during a few days of very high temperatures. “We had the need to open at noon for a few days because we were above forty degrees, it was not planned and this year in April, when the thermometer rose, we thought about dedicating the proceeds from the early summer solidarity campaign to become a climate shelter,” he recalls. the director of Arrels Sant Ignasi, Rosa Majoral.
Your goal is to continue. “We value being open all year, climate shelter is necessary in the heat and in the cold, if we can continue after September, we will try it,” he says.
Lleida City Council also offers climate shelters in outdoor spaces where the temperature is regulated and in some thirty air-conditioned interiors: retirement centers, civic centers, cultural facilities such as the Center d’Art La Panera, the Museu de l’Aigua, the Museu de l’Automoció Roda Roda or the Library of Pardinyes.
