Neighbors of Barceloneta demand the government of mayor Jaume Collboni to put order once and for all on the neighborhood’s beaches.
“We have a lot of tourists who leave the nightclubs drunk every morning and go to sleep on the beach,” laments Manel Martínez, from the neighborhood association on this side of the city. Before they slept in the cars, but lately, with the heat, they prefer to lie down on the sand or wherever they like, wherever… and, of course, behind them, behind the drunken tourists, we also have a lot of thieves! work that some also settle on the beach, on the promenade, in any corner of the neighborhood!”
“In fact –continues the spokesman for the Barceloneta residents’ association-, we already have a couple of especially conflictive points on the promenade, one where thieves meet and do their things, and another where several people spend the day drinking and already deals with drugs. Every summer they look worse. These places are normally full of dirt. Many neighbors shy away from them. Isn’t the new municipal government determined to recover the public space of the city? Don’t the beaches make up a good part of Barcelona’s public space? but we don’t just have a public order problem, we also have a social one”.
The neighborhood representative of the most maritime neighborhood in the city refers to the Endreça plan, to the great counter-offensive of the Collboni executive in order to recompose and straighten coexistence in the streets and squares of the city, to reduce noise, graffiti, large bottles, street vending, urine in any corner and any other sign of incivility. La Vanguardia explained this Sunday how a multitude of low-cost tourists and globetrotters are making stops and inns this summer on the beaches of Barceloneta -to save up to the cost of a bunk bed in a hostel-, and also how these popular sandbanks are also becoming They became the refuge of many people in very complicated situations.
“Indeed,” confirms the representative of the neighborhood’s neighborhood association. To low cost tourists, globetrotters and the thieves who chase them we must add the growing street vendors without permission, the continuous succession of sellers of sarongs, mojitos, massages, umbrellas, temporary tattoos, beer cans… Many people from the neighborhood is tired of having to say no all the time. She feels expelled from a place she had always used. And, well, some of those vendors also live on the beach. That is why we say that it is not only a problem of public order, we also have a social problem”.
Martínez also warns that a good part of the street vendors do not live only on the beach, many also do so tremendously crowded in small basements in the neighborhood. “Very dangerous situations are taking place. A few years ago, three pedicab drivers died in a fire on the ground floor”. Yes, in that apartment of barely thirty m2 lived seven people. “These situations are getting worse”, concludes the one from the neighborhood association.
