Spanish police evict hundreds of migrants from squat deemed safety hazard

Police in Spain carried out eviction orders on Wednesday to clear an abandoned school building where around 400 mostly undocumented migrants were living north of Barcelona.

Many sub-Saharan migrants, mainly from Senegal and Gambia, had moved into the empty school building in Badalona — a working-class city that borders Barcelona — since it was left abandoned in 2023.

Badalona Mayor Xavier García Albiol announced the evictions in a post on X.

"As I had promised, the eviction of the 400 illegal squatters in the B9 school in Badalona begins," he wrote.

Albiol, of the conservative Popular Party (PP), has built his political career on an anti-immigration stance.

Knowing that the eviction in the middle of winter was coming, most of the occupants had left the squat to try to find other shelter before police in riot gear from Catalonia's regional police Mossos d'Esquadraentered the school’s premises early in the morning under court orders.

Those who had waited left peacefully.

The judicial order made the Badalona town hall provide the evicted people with access to social services, but it did not oblige local authorities to find alternative housing for all the squatters.

Lawyer Marta Llonch, who represents the squatters, said that many people would likely end up without shelter in the cold.

"Many people are going to sleep on the street tonight," Llonch said. "Just because you evict these people it doesn’t mean they disappear. If you don’t give them an alternative place to live they will now be on the street, which will be a problem for them and the city."

Many of the squatters lived from selling scrap metal collected from the streets. Others had residency and work permits but were forced to live there because they could not afford housing during a cost-of-living crunch that is making it difficult even for working Spaniards to buy or rent homes.

That housing crisis has led to widespread social angst and public protests.

The Badalona town hall had argued that the squat was a public safety hazard. In 2020, an old factory occupied by around 100 migrants in Badalona caught fire, killing four people.

Like other southern European countries, Spain has for more than a decade seen migrants come to the country after risking their lives crossing the Mediterranean or Atlantic in small boats.

While many developed countries have taken a hard-line position against migration, Spain’s left-wing government has said that legal migration has helped its economy grow.