State of emergency – City Imaginaries

by Mar Peirató and Mariona Vidal

Due to the crisis triggered by Covid-19, several entities in the Ciutat Vella district have come together to end the consequences of the pandemic on the district, as well as poverty and social deprivation. They have created a new platform that brings together civil society, Emergència Ciutat Vella.

The dependence of the tourism sector has been its main problem, since it has suffered a massive decline with the pandemic situation and this has caused the queues of food distribution points to increase considerably, mostly with people working for hospitality and tourism.

The main objectives of the platform are to expand municipal social services as well as a basic income adapted to the cost of living of the district and a universal aid of 2,000 € aimed at all citizens. Likewise, they want to offer residence and work permits for everyone who has an unregistered job in order to eliminate the shadow economy. However, along with the proposal for more than 40 measures, it stands out one above all. As a consequence of the situation during the confinement in March 2020, approximately 600 temporary accommodations were set up for the homeless people to live in, but now those shelters no longer exist. Therefore, the platform urges the Town Hall to make that exceptional measure structural to be able to begin a change in dynamics and improvement of the living conditions of homeless people and, in general, for everyone living in the neighborhood.

The feedback from the city council has been in vain as they confess to not having any specific plan in place for the district. In fact, the neighborhood leader Manuel Martínez claims that “the administration abuses the use of dispatch policies” and that this municipal council that so much crows of being left-wing “errs on the same vices as previous administrations” which sat on right-wing.