The housing crisis, and more particularly the difficulties tenants have in finding a roof over their heads, is taking on particularly dramatic and violent forms, Barcelona in particular. While we find this type of difficulty in most large Western cities, the Catalan capital already has several suicides linked to poor housing and rental evictions. A few weeks ago, it was a septuagenarian who had lived for 30 years in the same building that ended its life due to its inability to pay the rent.
This time, it was two sisters aged 54 and 64 who preferred to throw themselves from the top of their building rather than be evicted from the Barcelona home they occupied, as reported by L’ Indépendant The two women were due to be evicted at 11am on Monday from their apartment on Calle Navas de Tolosa , in the Sant Andreu neighbourhood. The eviction had been ordered by the court a year earlier after she had already accumulated almost 9,000 euros in unpaid rent over two years, debts that have continued to grow.
Ban on tourist rentals
According to information from the daily El Pais Social services, mediators and the town hall tried to contact the two sisters before this eviction, but without success. The lifeless bodies of the two women were found early in the morning in the interior patio of their building. In this city with 1.65 million inhabitants and 12 million visitors per year, attention has been focused for several years on tourist rentals and their excesses, preventing the most vulnerable from finding accommodation. It is in this spirit that the city plans to ban Airbnb-type tourist rentals in 2028..