The Town Hall offered emergency accommodation to Mauricio and his family last weekend, but this Monday, in the midst of the DANA epidemic, they were forced to leave: “They tell us that we are registered in Huesca and that we have to go back.”
The Ombudsman investigates Valencia City Hall regarding the treatment of homeless people
Mauricio arrived in Valencia on October 20 with his wife and children aged 7 and 8 with their van and personal belongings. An architect by profession, he fled Colombia three years ago after receiving death threats from the paramilitaries and first ended up in Malaga, where he requested asylum, which allowed him to have a work and residence permit and to work in the construction world. from a worker at the beginning to even a manager.
After managing to scrape together some savings, he brought his wife and children from Colombia and moved first to Ávila in search of a greater and more affordable housing supply, and then to Pamplona. In both cases, he found it difficult to stay in a house and therefore had to resort to hostels. With their savings running low, they finally contacted the Red Cross, an organization that helped them find housing in Huesca. There, they stayed in an APIP-ACAM Foundation home dedicated to accommodation for vulnerable people, in a house shared with 40 other people. At the same time, his request for asylum was refused and, according to Mauricio, although he appealed, he was automatically removed from the register.
In the midst of all this administrative chaos, they decide to move to Valencia: “It’s a much bigger city where we think we have more job opportunities to support my family. Plus I needed to get my wife out of that environment, she has psychiatric issues because of this whole situation, she was hospitalized for six months and they gave her a 49% disability.
When they arrived in Valencia, they stayed in their own van, putting an inflatable mattress in the back for the children, hoping to find help and work to improve their situation. However, the legal tangle surrounding his asylum request and the surprising response from the social services of Valencia City Hall complicate his situation in the middle of DANA: “Thanks to an interview they did with us last week in the newspaper Elevator-EMV Regarding our situation, the Town Hall provided us with emergency accommodation in a hostel from October 25 to 28, as we were told, as a precaution due to the weather forecast. But this Monday they told us we had to leave, just as the weather was getting worse.
Regarding the reasons for the expulsion, they explained that the municipal social services told them that they could not do anything because they are not registered in Valencia, but in Huesca, and that therefore what they had to do was to When they returned, they even told them that they were “irresponsible” by leaving there and coming to Valencia.
According to Mauricio, “by being excluded from the asylum program, in theory we should not be registered, but we do not understand that this is an obstacle to offering emergency assistance when we have two minors sleeping in a van in which, in a certain way, a little water comes in when it rains; We are desperate, but we will continue here until we find something else, there is only so much we can do.
According to various non-governmental organizations consulted by this newspaper, neither the Social Services Law nor the emergency aid of the Generalitat Valenciana establishes that beneficiaries must be registered and in fact affirms that the aid was granted to unregistered people. repeatedly. These entities said they had recently received cases of people who must register for six months, which must meet internal instructions, but which would not be regulated in writing.
Political struggle between PP and PSPV
The PSPV-PSOE denounced this Tuesday the situation of “abandonment and helplessness” of the Colombian family with two minor children who were forced to live in a van in the middle of the street in the city of Valencia and criticized the City Hall for having been “unable to attend” this “very serious” emergency.
The socialist spokesperson at the Town Hall, Borja Sanjuán, regretted that this family in a situation of “extreme vulnerability” was not assisted by the municipal services in “full weather alert” and despite the fact that they ” contacted”, which he considered “inconceivable”.
Sanjuán stressed that the way this family was treated “are not ways of treating people who sleep on the street” and urged the mayor, María José Catalá, to “take an interest in it” so that this family “ Don’t end the day sleeping in a van. “The dignity of a city is measured by how it responds to these cases, it is not a partisan question, but a simple question of humanity,” he expressed.
For her part, the councilor for social services, Marta Torrado, indicated that the Valencia City Hall is “always” ready to help “anyone who comes to our city” because the powers of the town halls “speak of urgency”. clarified that this specific case concerns a family registered in Huesca, with two small children “with the obligation to send them to school” and with the father “with a job” in this city.
For this reason, he declared that he “does not understand how, without saying anything”, the City Council of Huesca, the Government of Aragon and the Government of Spain “decided unilaterally, without informing anyone, to come to our city.” Despite this, he assured that the Valencia City Council, for “reasons of urgency and humanity”, took care of this family “the first days”, but stressed that in Huesca “they complained to from them because they have the obligation to send the two minors to school.” by being registered there.
Therefore, Torrado argued, the Valencia City Council cannot provide them with “any emergency aid”, given that the “first condition” for this is, “logically”, that they are registered in the city. Furthermore, the councilor indicated that the municipality is in talks with the family so that they can return to Huesca and that “from there they can continue this assistance”, while urging the Spanish government to “assume its powers in matters protection.”
The socialists assured that they had informed the Minors’ Ombudsman and the Greuges Mediator of this situation because “this is not the first time that Valencia has made the headlines for having abandoned families on the street”. “The abandonment of the CAI and the elimination of emergency places due to the closure of resources lead to the collapse of the city’s social services”, they warned, while describing the management of the PP as “shameful”. .
