His name is Bartolomé, he is tall and handsome, he must be around 70 years old, he speaks Castilian with a marked Catalan accent. He is educated, seductive, and flirtatious. More than flirtatious, he is vain. He knows how to talk to you and listen to you, you can tell he was a salesman, and a good one.
He had been a fishmonger; that connected a lot with me, with my origins and with the hardness of this work, so vocational and enslaving at the same time. A true school of empathy, sales, and life, which forges character. Bartomeu became expansion director of a textile company in the Maresme region of Barcelona. He had traveled all over Spain selling whatever he could. He did more or less well, he got married, had a son, had a house, and a car. The car is the only thing he still has.
He has been living on the street for three years, specifically in his car. He looks brave, strong, more or less happy, and maintains his routines. He goes to soup kitchens, washes up in public bathrooms, has his social worker, takes medication for a circulation problem, is clean, and looks very good. He is resilience personified. He says he has no friends, that he knows nothing about his son, that he wants to fix up a motorhome and travel around Europe. He laughs. He tells jokes. He has a Colombian girlfriend who takes care of some children in the upper area of Barcelona and they only see each other one day every two weeks.
I learned about this story just a week ago, participating as a volunteer in a research project led by the Arrels Foundation to find out the state of homelessness in Barcelona. I was only three lunchtimes in a soup kitchen in the Sant Martí District, but it was enough to see a world within another world. Barcelona has identified about 1,300 people living rough. 1% of the population. In three days, we interviewed 676 people among 271 volunteers, most of them women. Arrels trained and accompanied us.
I am familiar with the third sector, but this time it was different. It had a special harshness. I met Ahmed, Manuela, and Bartomeu; three human beings who opened their hearts and told me how they came to live on the street. Due to bad decisions. Due to separations. Due to bankruptcies. Due to inheritances, envy, addictions, or simply, due to bad luck.
Social services are not up to par. They repeat it. They tell me they walk up to seven kilometers daily to cover their basic needs. That we look at them like trash. That in Parc de la Ciutadella there are urban guards and cleaning staff who shout at them and kick them out. That life on the other side of the shore is hell.
From this small space, I want to celebrate those who make their lives less hostile: the entities, organizations, and people who accompany those who have left the road and are in the ditch. Thank you, Fundació Arrels, and to the companies that finance studies like this. Thanks to social impact companies like TU TECHO. And thanks to the media that give visibility to this Barcelona that is also ours and we must take care of. Public policies that make this side of the city visible and provide solutions will build a more just and dignified Barcelona. BAR-CEL-ONA; this CEL, this sky, must be starry and beautiful. It should not be the only roof for these people who have drawn the short straw.