Spanish police evict hundreds of migrants from squat deemed a safety hazard

BARCELONA Spain AP Police in northeastern Spain began carrying out eviction orders Wednesday to clear an abandoned school building where hundreds of mostly undocumented asylum seekers were living in a squat north of Barcelona Knowing that the eviction was coming the bulk of the occupants had left before police in riot gear from Catalonia s regional police entered the school s premises early in the morning under court orders The squat was located in Badalona a working class city that borders Barcelona Several sub-Saharan asylum seekers mostly from Senegal and Gambia had moved into the empty school building since it was left abandoned in The mayor of Badalona Xavier Garc a Albiol informed the evictions in a post on X As I had promised the eviction of the squat of illegal squatters in the B school in Badalona begins he wrote Lawyer Marta Llonch who represents the squatters announced that multiple of them lived from selling scrap metal collected from the streets while a insufficient others have residency and work permits but were forced to live there because they couldn t afford housing Multiple people are going to sleep on the street tonight Llonch advised The Associated Press 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 dilemma for them and the city Garc a Albiol of the conservative Popular Party has built his political career as Badalona s long-standing mayor with an anti-immigration stance The Badalona town hall had argued that the squat was a general safety hazard In an old factory occupied by around a hundred expatriates in Badalona caught fire and four people were killed in the blaze Like other southern European countries Spain has for more than a decade seen a steady influx of movers who risked their lives journeying the Mediterranean or Atlantic in small boats While various developed countries have taken a hard-line position against migration Spain s left-wing administration has noted that legal migration has helped its market grow Source