They have studied and researched. Or they have worked all their lives (some, from the age of 14). Others have traveled, have taught classes and have come to employ a hundred people. Now they are all retired and to live together in a decent apartment they have had to go to a non-profit foundation, Llars Compartides. Before they didn’t make ends meet. Jaime Ramos, Francesc Cervera, David Forgas and Paulina Fernández break clichés.
Jaime, 72, was self-employed and developed a long career in the fur industry as a cutter, although he had a thousand trades. Francesc, 85, a member of a family that owned looms and made ties, lived for three decades in Mexico and even signed contracts with the governor of a state. Both David and Paulina are 70 years old. The first had two marriages, two houses and a company that went under…
The case of Paulina, born in Asturias to Argentine parents, is very curious. At the age of nine, her family returned to Argentina, where she trained and developed a career as a biochemist. When he retired, he had an excellent pension, which vanished with the corralito, the devaluation, the country’s crisis, and galloping inflation (the largest legal tender bill, the 2,000-peso bill, is barely enough to pay for a latte). .
She and her three roommates never imagined that one day they would be in Barcelona on the other side of Primo Levi’s verses: “Those of you who live safely / In your warm houses / Those of you who find yourself, when you return in the afternoon, / the food warm and friendly faces”. The La Caixa Foundation has promoted and subsidized this year with more than 10.6 million euros a total of 358 social projects in Catalonia.
Among these 358 initiatives is that of Llars Compartides, which coincides with institutions such as Càritas, Banc dels Aliments and Arrels Fundació when it comes to warning of the emergence of a new poverty. Having a job (or a pension) is no longer an antidote to vulnerability. People who thought they were safe in their “heated houses” can find themselves on the street from one day to the next, with a suitcase, starting from scratch, looking for a roof.
Or with the need to share a flat to meet basic expenses. This is the case of Jaime, Francesc, David and Paulina. Fortunately, they never saw each other sleeping on the street, but Jaime was about to do so “on several occasions.” Francesc spent four nights in a storage room (“you’d be surprised how many people do that”). And David lived in boarding houses so dingy and damp that the clothes in his suitcases had fungus on them.
Paulina’s situation has never been so desperate. When things became more and more complicated in Argentina, she and her two children, who also have dual nationality, decided to try their luck in Spain. Accustomed to getting by without anyone’s help (she was widowed at a very young age), her children wanted her to go live with them, but she did not want to give up her independence or feel that she was a burden to anyone.
With his meager income, he could not afford an apartment like the one he now has in Nou Barris, very close to the Turó de la Peira park, a large natural space and one of the most unknown large gardens in the city. There are many slopes in this part of Barcelona. So many that many routes have revealing names, such as Calle Vall d’Ordesa, Escales d’Erta or Escales de Matagalls (1,697 meters, in the Montseny massif).
Llars Compartides was born to offer a home to pensioners without financial independence, but with physical and mental autonomy. They are beneficiaries who cannot afford a rental with their pensions or non-contributory income. The foundation rents homes at social prices and hands them over to people like Jaime, Francesc, David and Paulina, who pay according to their capacity, never exceeding 30% of their monthly income.
Today the project serves 51 elderly people in 12 floors. They are few? The Talmud says that whoever saves a life saves humanity. Furthermore, this is not the only foundation that fights against residential exclusion. The Taula del Tercer Sector de Catalunya, which is celebrating its 20th anniversary these days, represents 35 federations that bring together more than 3,000 altruistic institutions.
All of our homes are mixed, “except one in which three women live because the circumstances have arisen, not because we have sought it,” explains Gala Larxé, social educator at Llars Compartides. Francesc, the oldest in the house, 85 years old, watches her with moist eyes. “What’s wrong with you?” they ask. And he can no longer hold back his tears: “I am moved because people like Gala are angels!”
Francesc had four looms and went bankrupt trying to refloat them. Today he is a rich man, although he only earns 8,916 euros per year, divided into 14 payments of 480 euros and 12 aids of 183. 743 euros come out per month, “but that amount is fictitious: add the aid I receive for housing, for health and public transport, for… If paying three euros I can even go to the Liceu with initiatives such as the Apropa Cultura foundation!
Jaime’s economic hole is similar, although he never went bankrupt. “I did nothing but work as a freelancer and be ruined all my life: the salary was not enough.” He is always smiling, but the other day he got angry when Francesc told him in a moment of despair that he had no family: “That’s not true. You have children and, even if you didn’t, you have me, David and Paulina. You have us.”
Francesc provokes bittersweet laughter with his peculiar etymologies. “Brother-in-law comes from wedge. And I don’t want to insert myself like a wedge into my children’s houses. I do not want to bother or be a brother-in-law grandfather ”. Paulina has two children and a grandson, who come to see her every week. She was always fine with the option of sharing a home, although it never occurred to her that one day she would need help to do so.
Jaime sometimes arrives a little later, when everyone is already in their rooms or about to go to bed. He goes door to door, knocking gently to wish them good night and ask if everything is alright. In those moments, Paulina, who is in love with Barcelona, ??feels comforted and thinks that she is very happy: “I live surrounded by good people, in a beautiful city with a social rent.”
David made a very good living as a ventilation technician. His company had a hundred employees, which fell to six when the crisis hit. He used his savings to green up the laurels of his business, but tossed a coin and it came up tails. He still owes 24,000 euros to the banks. He has four children. Two older from his first marriage. And two 17-year-old twins from the second, who also sank.
David receives the highest pension in the house, but a judicial setback, the separation, alimony and debts made him look into the abyss. The abyss was for him a sublet room with a lot of humidity and a moldy smell; for Paulina, giving up everything she had achieved in Argentina and starting from scratch in Catalonia; for Jaime, the fear of ending up sleeping on the street, as 1,231 people in Barcelona do every day.
And Francesc’s abyss, like a modern Tantalus or Sisyphus, was a continuous pilgrimage from pension to pension, unable to put down roots. “They told me ‘it’s that you shower every day and use up a lot of water’ and they kicked me out. And start over, walking around the street, dragging my suitcase”. And so until one day Mònica, his social worker, asked him: “Do you know who Agustí Gómez Passolas was, the founder of Llars Compartides?”
