“We are in a housing access crisis and even if we focus on construction, we are faced with a tsunami of very sick floors, which will be in ruins in the future if we do not take seriously their restoration. And this is also the right to housing.” This is the warning from João Maria Soler. He recently launched the Barcelona Municipal Association Vecinales (FAVB) and five districts in the city where he estimates there are 8,000 homes with “serious structural deficiencies.” The population is concentrated in the neighborhoods of Besòs (5,000 houses, 2,800 in serious danger), Lapau (2,500 people), Trinitat Vela (432 people), Poblenou (314 people), and El Carmel (very serious for five years, but not for decades). They share that they are on the fringes, have low or very low incomes, and that their socio-economic makeup makes it difficult for their communities to come together and have the purchasing power to carry out large-scale works. We call for further management tailored to the complex social situation and public and available credit facilities. Some have had to leave their homes, some are living in corners, and some even live on floors where they have lost their proof of occupancy.
Juan Antonio Amaya, 42, was among those forced to march near Besos. I have been stranded away from my home for over a year since my roof started to fail. After a short stay in a hostel, he spent more than a year in a boarding house. “For a year, I didn’t really feel like I was sitting on the couch, and I didn’t even open it,” she says of the life the couple spent in their room in a boarding house. “Do you have to go crazy to feel bad?” asks the old man, whose family lived in a tent in Somorrostro. His building on the street in Catania has been under surveillance since 2019. The first points of success in the past are in the attic and will last forever. The farm has a regeneration plan in place, but it is clear that there is no bank guarantee for the loan in the past. Let’s talk about Rafa, the president of the community. 71 years old, “I feel tired and nervous for the first time in 10 years.” “How many times have you been able to confront that piece? No one can. This piece is injectable.”
We are in the three poorest census areas in Barcelona. On Marsala Street, parallel to Catania, 52-year-old Aurora Jiménez, who has a pointed floor, has lived since 2022. Her sister’s floor is also on the same staircase. Here we see the hull of the ship coming off the roof three times. “When I went there for Christmas, a stone fell on the table while I was eating my second plate,” Aurora says, gesturing. “So sometimes you think you won’t be able to live, you won’t have the right environment, you won’t be able to get up again,” he says, pointing to the bathroom floor where it was discovered and explaining that a restoration project is planned on his property for 2027, according to Ayuntamiento’s program. There’s a pradur in the living room so you can’t see the humidity, and it’s time to wait. All he had to do was remove the furniture while he lived “on a drip for months.”
Since FAVB, Soler recalled in a press conference that across Catalonia, 300,000 homes have been affected by Arminosis alone. Last year, five buildings in Badalona were relocated due to structural problems. Y en Esplugues, he is known as El Barco. Representatives of the association reported this as these areas of Barcelona passed mayoral promises, plans and requests for public funds without the situation improving. In addition, some regions have passed $1 million, which is most representative of Next Generation Fund availability. The scale, management complexity and delays of the works make financing impossible and require the works to be completed by June 2026.
Custodia Moreno, from the El Carmel neighborhood, with the support of veterans, explained that although the situation is not as serious as in El Besos o Trinitat Vera, the neighborhood “has the letter again.” And I put my finger in a corner: there is a well-intentioned plan that the elders praise, but which ends up creating frustration due to delays and management problems: “The Ayuntamiento Baris Plaque is offering us a Mercedes, but due to bad management it turns out that a series of blocks are broken without being able to carry out repairs. Implement a long-term global project,” he demanded.
I can’t live like this. There is no suitable environment,” says Aurora, who will live between the hills from 2022 and in a renovation project until 2027.
FAVB President Mikel Boras said that regardless of whether the affected buildings are public or private, “neighbors are paying the price for the government’s inaction in planning”. It enumerated a list of plans, laws, management methods, proportions of public funds, interventions, agreements with employers, associations, public authorities… One of the great schools, persuaded by senior representatives, is the “self-management with assistance” method of public administration, in which the elderly have to take charge of the process with the help of private “rehabilitation agents”. “Very often, the vulnerability and instability of older people precludes questions about how to obtain guarantees and loans,” I say, and support adjusting the average value for each issue. Administrators are creating “unjust situations” in which seniors can be fined for properties where planes are parked or buildings in poor condition that have failed the necessary technical inspections to receive subsidies. When someone is forced to march, I say, they run into a “bureaucratic and technical labyrinth that leaves them in a hopeless situation.”
Teresia Pardo, a representative of the Beso family, warned of the dire situation in the area, where the administration has been promising projects “since 1977” and where some families have lived for several years, while others have left their homes. Rehabilitation planning is closely related to rheumatism tortuga. It is a vicious cycle where buildings fall into poor condition, which causes retirement relief. The building can move forward, but the floors lose value and the new old building is less likely to address the problem. Work: “If there is a niche of poverty, where there are unmanageable problems, here we cannot take any measures. We are not asking for payment. What can be extended is public management and credit lines. “There is life, but if someday there is misfortune, the person responsible will have a name and a surname.”
Miguel Romera, head of the La Pau Vecino Association, explained that the polygon was built in the 1960s with “very poor construction quality and is very vulnerable”, but that the situation on the ground is “more structured than in El Besos”, but that “the whole district is built of aluminum cement” and that old parts still remain. Attending rehabilitation. “The City and Urban Institute has proposed that it become an urban regeneration area, but nothing has been achieved. 20 tests have been carried out, new soil has been prepared, but no results have been obtained and the block is deteriorating.”
On behalf of Taura de la Trinitat Vela, Roberto Rodríguez reported on the urban renewal project that began in 2018 in this suburban area. “We were promised to build 452 new homes in 75 properties within 30 years, but in May this year we were informed that the terms had changed. We had been promised that 85% of the cost would be covered by public funds, but that had dropped to 40%.” “It will be useful in the new society, but it will be a no-brainer,” he asserted, regretting the need for Next Generation Funds to allocate 30% to energy efficiency when these assets have other priorities. “Urban renewal is a necessity, not a luxury. With delays and changes in insurance coverage standards, the opportunity to represent these projects has generated a lot of frustration and is a matter of justice,” he said.
Ayuntamiento responded that it “aims at improving housing conditions in the city and its surroundings, has an integral character, adheres to an urban renewal program aimed at reducing the vulnerability of the quality of life in the city and strengthening the resilience of society.” Local government officials have assured that this is a “strategic program” and that, regarding the Next Generation Fund area, they will need to work with the government to ensure that “projects started before 30 June 2026 are marked as valid due to the temporary restrictions on the measures regulating the fund.”
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