It was 13.00 on Friday when when a team from the Local Police and the Zaragoza Firefighters They arrived next to Social Services personnel to portals 72 and 74 of Pignatelli Street. At that time there are still four families inside the building that until now had been their home. Urbanism has declared it in ruins and will be imminently demolished.
Fermín is 58 years old and waits next to the portal of his home suitcase in hand to come to pick him up after being evicted. “I have returned from the social dining room and I have found this,” explains this neighbor of the hook. He is waiting for a place to be granted in a guarded center. “I can’t live on the street,” he says at the same time he acknowledges that he has been left with nothing: “I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
While the masons wait around the corner for the evicted to get all their belongings of the building, another neighbor with which everything has happened: “I will not leave my things here that have cost me a lot! To go in a hurry and run is not easy,” he adds.
In many of the balconies in the area, claiming flags hang. Photo: Lorena Torrijo
And now what?
Mario, another affected, does not want to go to the shelter without having taken all the belongings of his family, “if things had been normal … but since they have not been so, I take whatever it takes,” he says altered.
Among the 22 evicted are eight minors who also participate in the cargo work of their family’s assets in the moving truck that have been provided. Meanwhile, a young man from the portal comes out with what appears to be a game console and two controls, to which his sister shouts, “But what do you do, have said that only the important thing?”, “For me it is important,” the young man replies.
As the portals empty and the vans are filled, the contained rabies are mixed in the street, the impotence of not having choice and the dignity of who, despite everything, is still standing. Because apart from the files, the decrees and the technical reports, what is behind each door that closes are families. Families with children, with memories, with routines that fall apart today. And although the future is uncertain, they all share the same need: move on.
The masons block the tickets to the building after the eviction. Photo: Lorena Torrijo
