The eight families who were evicted last Friday from their home on Calderón de la Barca street, in the La Salut neighborhood of Badalona (Barcelonès Nord), have filed 16 complaints before the city’s Court of Instruction number 4, in which They accuse the mayor, Xavier García Albiol, of a crime of illegitimate interference with honor, by publicly stating that those who lived in the house were criminals and uncivil.
Xavier García Albiol has not retracted his statements. The mayor of Badalona has stated that “while the majority of residents pay for water and electricity, these people had been tapping them for years” with fraudulent connections. Furthermore, he added that “in this country this is a criminal offense.” Along the same lines, he explained that the house not only threatened ruin, but also went from being single-family to having up to eight substandard homes, some in the basements.
The eight evicted families have remained for three days in an emergency center in Barcelona, ??but today they were forced to leave it. All of them demand that Social Services not leave them on the street since “we have nowhere to go.” For the moment, they keep their belongings stored in a location provided to them by social platforms.
The complaints have been formalized based on Albiol’s comments on social networks. Those affected accuse the mayor of being “racist and xenophobic” and demand public rectification. “It is an act of racism, it leaves eight families with small children without an alternative and it treats us as criminals,” laments Abobubakar, one of the residents. Others claim that “they leave us on the street because we are Moroccans.”
The families have received support from various social entities. Thus, the Sant Roc Som Badalona Platform demands that they be given shelter and that the City Council hold the owner of the building accountable, since those evicted last Friday “had been living there for twenty years and had a rental contract.”
For their part, political groups in the opposition demand a solution to prevent them from being left on the streets, as the PSC has demanded, while the rest have launched harsh accusations against the mayor whom they accuse of maintaining xenophobic and fascist attitudes.
Finally, the City Council of Badalona has granted temporary accommodation to three of the eight families. The Department of Social Services has agreed to provide a room in a hostel in Santa Coloma de Gramanet to a woman with a high degree of blindness with two dependent children.
