Spanish city evicts hundreds of migrants from occupied building
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Most of the migrants left peacefully carrying their belongings in carts or sat in the street with their luggage, with no other place to go.
PHOTO: REUTERS
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- Spanish police evicted 400 migrants from a squatted Badalona high school, the largest such eviction in Spain, ordered by Mayor Xabier Garcia Albiol.
- Clashes occurred between police and activists. Migrants, left without housing, faced sleeping rough as authorities offered no alternatives.
- Mayor Albiol cited fighting illegality linked to immigration, contrasting with the national government's pro-migration stance, highlighting its economic benefits.
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BADALONA, Spain – Spanish police on Dec 17 evicted hundreds of migrants from a former high school in the north-eastern city of Badalona, in what a union representing local tenants described as the largest such eviction ever in Spain.
The building, long occupied by squatters, was cleared under orders from Badalona Mayor Xabier Garcia Albiol of the conservative opposition People’s Party (PP), whose views on migration clash with a more permissive stance of Spain’s leftist government.
Brief clashes erupted between riot police and activists and migrants, but most left peacefully carrying their belongings in carts or sat in the street with their luggage, with no other place to go.
Mr Albiol justified the move by the need to fight illegality and crime, which he has often linked to irregular immigration, advocating deportations for offenders.
Spain’s central government has largely embraced migration, highlighting its economic benefits, at a time when other EU countries have been tightening borders and right-wing parties gaining traction with promises of tougher immigration controls.
The tenants’ union and other associations urged authorities to provide housing alternatives for the roughly 400 people evicted, but the migrants, such as 25-year-old undocumented Senegalese man Boubacar, said they had no choice but to sleep rough.
“Tonight our plan is to sleep in the street because we don’t know where to go. And as you can see, it’s raining right now and it’s cold, and we don’t know what to do. We’re going to have to sleep like this; it’s very hard,” said Boubacar, who only gave his first name.
In the same city five years ago, five people died when an industrial building caught fire with West African migrants inside. REUTERS
