In Sant Adrià de Besòs, the first evictions of 58 occupied flats in La Mina have been postponed after a court linked the delay to the police operation for Pope Leo XIV’s visit to Barcelona.
Five evictions were due on Wednesday and Thursday, 10 and 11 June, for flats occupied since 2017. The Badalona Court of First Instance Number 5 ruled that they should be deferred because of “service and public force needs”, according to a court order seen by El Periódico.
The Pope’s 48-hour visit to Catalonia mobilised more than 7,000 police officers, including 5,600 Mossos d’Esquadra agents. That scale of deployment would have made police intervention in La Mina more difficult if residents had resisted eviction.
Sources close to the occupants also said they believed the visit was behind the postponement. Wednesday was the main day of the Pontiff’s trip, with events at Brians prison, Montserrat Abbey, Sant Agustí church in the Raval, and the blessing of the Sagrada Família’s Jesus Tower.
Other evictions in La Mina are still scheduled for June. Three are set for 18 June, another three for 25 June, and the four originally planned for Thursday have been moved to 22 June. The eviction planned for Wednesday has been delayed by three months. Further dates are expected on 29 June, 2 July, and two more on 8 July.
The occupied flats were built with public funds to rehouse residents from the Venus street block, which has been waiting for demolition for more than two decades. The Consorci de La Mina, made up of the Generalitat de Catalunya, Barcelona and Sant Adrià councils, and the Provincial Council, now expects the Venus block to be demolished by 2028. All residents must be relocated before then. For more Catalonia housing coverage, see our news tag.
By late April, 55 of the 244 Venus households were vacant and boarded up. Institutions plan to offer the recovered flats to Venus residents before demolition. Occupants, backed by members of the Sindicat d'Habitatge de la Verneda i el Besòs, argue that plans for La Mina changed after they moved in and that the homes were no longer reserved for Venus street residents.
The council says the evictions must go ahead because they involve a mass occupation of public housing. It also says people who occupied publicly funded homes cannot be prioritised on emergency lists, and that the flats are reserved for Venus residents before demolition. The Department of Social Rights and the council have also reported attempts to sell and sublet some of the occupied homes illegally.