In Lleida, community projects are helping people who face involuntary loneliness, with support adapted to both rural villages and the city. The work ranges from shared activities for older residents to housing support for people who have experienced homelessness.
In Pla de Sant Tirs, M. Rosa Cava, president of the local pensioners' centre, and M. Carmen Laguna, the secretary, have taken part in the Vincles project for a year. Laguna said many villages are becoming “dormitory towns”, where working-age people only return to sleep, leaving older residents more isolated.
Cava said the project helps create “a network of support and community activation”. She added that, for coexistence in villages, especially among older people, initiatives like this are very necessary. Both women said the workshops have helped them make friends with neighbours from other villages.
Laguna said the project also helps staff spot people who are suffering from loneliness. It began with five or six participants, and some workshops now attract 12 to 15 neighbours. Activities include ceramics, cooking, DIY, memory exercises and photography. For more on local coverage, see news.
In Lleida city, Tamara Puigfell takes part in the Housing First programme, run by the Paeria and Sant Joan de Déu. The scheme provides individual housing to help people who have experienced homelessness return to social normality. Puigfell said, “The flat has helped me a lot. If I hadn’t had it, I don’t know how I would have ended up; probably dead.”
Puigfell spent four and a half years sleeping rough in Lleida, near the Seu Vella castle, after struggling with drug addiction and losing custody of her child. Arrels, a local organisation, counts 237 people sleeping rough and 1,400 without a home in Lleida. Puigfell has been in the programme for five years, has not used drugs for two years, has adopted a dog and is training to become a socio-health technician.
The move from the street to a home was not easy. Puigfell said she struggled at first to sleep in a bed and often slept in the living room with the television on. She also needed follow-up support to pay the rent, out of habit. The projects show how responses to involuntary loneliness in Catalonia need to be local, practical and tailored to each person’s situation.
