The controversy over the closure of the Can Bofí Vell emergency shelter, in Badalona (Barcelonès Nord), continues to rage. A group of homeless people who were taking refuge there have decided to spend the night on the benches in Plaza de la Vila, in front of the Town Hall, to make their situation visible.
“We are on the street without food and without a place to sleep. Albiol has no feelings, he is a scoundrel,” explain Rocío and Carlos, two of the shelter’s users over the last year. The platform that supports them, Badalona Acull, regrets that the council turns its back on this problem and that hundreds of people are “left by the hand of God” in the city. The PP municipal government has declined to make statements on this matter.
The closure of Can Bofí Vell materialized on April 29, almost three weeks ago. Since then, the 45 users who were there have been left on the streets and without any resources to feed themselves. “Some days we eat and others we don’t,” explains Carlos García, one of the homeless people who slept in the Plaza de la Vila this Thursday.
The man is aware that the City Council will not give them “anything” the day after their action and that they may end up being evicted from the place, but he voices the need to move his usual ‘bedroom’ to the center of the city to make visible the situation they are experiencing and “claim human rights.”
Since April 29, he and his partner, Rocio Caparrós, have been sleeping on benches in front of the shelter that has been their home in recent months. They say it indignantly with the mayor of the city, Xavier Garcia Albiol, whom they admit to having voted in the municipal elections. “I said that everything would change and it has changed for the worse,” they exclaim.
Their vulnerability is aggravated in the case of women. Caparrós has undergone a triple heart bypass and needs to take medication daily. However, her case is not the only one. The spokesperson for the Badalona Acull platform, Jaume Ventura, assures that in the majority of cases these are “sick people” who need care.
The entity has supported them in recent days, but they warn that the problem of homelessness is not limited only to the forty people of Can Bofí Vell. There are people, they explain, who do not resort to help and that there are numerous settlements with “hundreds of people living poorly on the streets.”
Badalona Acull describes the situation as “unworthy” and demands that the municipal government be proactive with the problem. According to the entity’s spokesperson, the previous government had already planned an expansion of the shelter service with the opening of a new center and reproaches the PP for having stopped it and also for having allowed the closure of Can Bofí Vell due to a situation of non-payment.
