The flow does not stop and this Tuesday Barcelona saw a new building with tenants threatened with being expelled from their apartments: like Casa Orsola in its time, the inhabitants of Sepúlveda 83 street, in the Sant Antoni neighborhood (Eixample), presented themselves as a “fighting bloc”. With the help of the neighborhood’s Socialist Housing Union, they explained that last June, the heirs to the farm’s ownership sold it to a company, and some neighbors began receiving notices warning that their contracts would not be renewed when they expired. The new ownership is Vandor, “a real estate investment, promotion and management company based in Barcelona, focused on the non-permanent housing segment,” according to its website.
Like many others in the Eixample and other neighborhoods of the city, such as Gràcia or Poble-sec, it is a building where neighbors since birth, families with minor children and some single parents live. Of the 28 floors of the building, there are already nine empty. The others live with the sword of Damocles when their contracts expire. The ones that will finish first are one in December and another in early 2026. Erika, one of the neighbors, reported in a press conference that there are people in vulnerable situations on the farm and reported: “Little by little, the neighbors left, because they wanted to avoid conflict, or because they thought they had nothing to do in this situation.” In the case of the new construction announced by the neighbors, the empty houses are not yet under construction and remain closed.
“Sepúlveda 83 is another example of how the real estate business forces people to leave their homes: large owners and investment funds buy entire buildings and profit through the practice of fragmenting apartments into rooms, seasonal rentals and co-livingto the detriment of housing as a fundamental right”, insist the members of the Union, citing the case of Bloc Papallona in via Llançà, a few hundred meters from Sepúlveda, 83.
The Union and the organized neighbors assured that they attempted to contact Vandor, “but there was no response”. By making their cases known, they try to put pressure to start “a negotiation” with the new owner and “stop the emptying of the building”. Among those affected is also Boris Oleart, who told Betevé that his contract will expire in a few months and expressed his fear for the future: “My children attend school in the neighbourhood, we have our support network here and we could not stay in Sant Antoni or the neighboring neighborhood, due to the high price of rents.”
In February this year, the neighborhood associations of Eixample updated data from a study by the Federation of Neighborhood Associations (FAVB), the five neighborhood associations (Dreta, Esquerra, Nova Esquerra, Sagrada Familia and Fort Pienc) and the Tenants’ Union. In the neighbourhood, they warn, there are 232 properties purchased or managed by companies, 70% of the rentals are seasonal (if you search on internet portals), 21% of the beds in the neighborhood are intended for tourism, and since 2016 there have been 4 thousand invisible evictions (in which the neighbors left not of their own free will, but because they could not cope with the conditions imposed on them by the new owners). The associations speak of 10,000 neighbors expelled by these invisible evictions (multiplying the buildings by an average of 17 apartments per building and 2.5 people per apartment, and in a scenario in which 100% of the neighbors would have left).
