Last year, the Barcelona Urban Police launched the SAV, a care service for victims of sexist violence, with two first spaces, in Ciutat Vella and in Nou Barris. One of the first victims who came to the police station on La Rambla detailed how two years ago she was repeatedly raped, harassed and humiliated by her partner at the time. A man who, in addition to sexually assaulting her, forced her to have relationships with other men and other situations that are difficult to reproduce in these pages.
The scene of these sexual assaults was La Tancada dels Immigrants, the space in Plaza de la Gardunya that this week the Barcelona Urban Police recovered in a joint operation with the Mossos d’Esquadra and the National Police, after obtaining judicial authorization.
The eviction took place without notable incidents, despite the afternoon’s attempts by some associations to lead a response that included barely two hundred protesters, who mixed the eviction with the result of the last regional elections.
The City Council and the Ciutat Vella district defended the eviction with safety and health criteria. The scene, at the back of the Boqueria market, was the subject of 400 police interventions last year alone, in addition to a hundred written complaints from neighbors and merchants, tired of the problems it generated.
This place initially welcomed migrants in an irregular situation. Over time it degenerated into a den of criminals joined by other individuals who surely had no better place to be.
The safety of the space and the risk it posed to the occupants and the surrounding residents weighed heavily. Electricity supplies were maintained with botched arrangements to obtain free fluid that at any time could have caused a serious incident. Furthermore, the Barcelona Firefighters determined that the accumulation of garbage and junk represented fuel for a fire in a densely populated neighborhood and whose consequences could have been unforeseeable.
From their balconies, there were many neighbors who applauded the eviction of a space that in recent times had only brought problems to the neighborhood.