Massive demonstration in Barcelona for the right to housing. The Tenants Union, under the slogan “it’s over, let’s lower the rents”, has gathered tens of thousands of people in a protest that has called for a rent strike. “It is not understood, people without homes and houses without people”, one of the most heard cries in the protests over the financial crisis of 2008, continues to resonate in the streets three decades later.
It has been the most massive demonstration in Catalonia since the times of the process. The organizers have set attendance at 170,000 people, while the Guàrdia Urbana has lowered it to 22,000, a figure that the Tenants’ Union has called an “insult” and “attempted manipulation.”
In any case, it has been years since a social demand has brought together so many people on the street, in a new example that housing is one of the conflicts that generates the most unrest in the Spain of 2024. More than 50 entities, from unions to Òmnium or the ANC, have joined the march led by the Tenants’ Union.
In addition to columns arriving from more than ten neighborhoods, organized protesters from towns and cities throughout Catalonia have come to the capital. The housing problem goes beyond the Barcelona conurbation.
The protesters have marched through the streets of Barcelona to endorse the demands of the Tenants’ Union: a 50% reduction in rents, indefinite contracts to end the “insecurity” of tenants, recovering empty, tourist and tourist apartments for residential use. of seasonal rentals and impose high taxes on rentiers who are multi-owners of homes.
The spokesperson for the Tenants Union, Carme Arcarazo, has called the demonstration a “turning point.” And it has targeted landlords whose way of life is collecting rent. “Enough of the rentiers who are getting richer while we are poorer,” he proclaimed, and then addressed the socialist party: “Enough of cosmetic policies, they are about real policies and not excuses for competition, because there are a party that governs in Madrid, Barcelona and Catalonia.”
The march made a stop at Casa Orsola, a symbol of the tenants’ resistance against an investment fund that wants to generate profits in this modernist estate. Enric Aragonès, spokesperson for the Tenants’ Union, has highlighted the “example” of the Orsola tenants and has called on those attending to unionize to organize the tenants’ strike.
A month after the massive demonstration in Madrid, the Barcelona march takes over the protest against the increase in rental prices, which are increasingly unaffordable for many working families. Housing is one of the announced priorities of the Salvador Illa Government, but medium and long-term public policies contrast with the urgency of many families.
Although it is intergenerational, the problem of access to housing affects young people. This is the case of Sergi, Adri and Joan, three friends from Castelldefels (Barcelona), who remain at their parents’ house although they work because they cannot find an affordable apartment in their municipality. “My parents’ neighbors pay 1,600 euros in rent. I can’t face this alone,” Adri laments.
More veteran assistants also express concern about what will happen when their contract runs out. “I still have a few years left, but I’m already afraid of ending up like my sister, whose landlady hasn’t extended the rent because she wants to make a seasonal rental,” complains Victòria, a resident of Poble-sec who criticizes that her neighborhood ” “It has become impossible because of the tourist apartments.”
In the Catalan capital, the average rental price is 1,132 euros per month, 70% more than a decade ago, according to official data. Salaries are far from this increase, which has expelled several Barcelonans from the city where they were born and would like to live. To the cocktail we must add the increase in seasonal and room rentals, the route of several owners to escape price regulation.
At the foot of the march, Albert and Adrià, two friends from Barcelona, have criticized the “unsustainable” situation in the city and the concentration of homes in few owners. Their discomfort was shared by the demonstration, whose most chanted slogan was “not one euro more, rent strike.”
Source: www.eldiario.es
