Spanish police entered the former B9 secondary school in Badalona on 17 December, evicting around 400 people who had been living there without formal contracts. Most were West African men who had turned the building into one of Catalonia’s largest informal settlements after years of casual work and unstable accommodation.
The court order cited structural risks, fire hazards and recent incidents as justification for the clearance, and authorised officers to remove occupants who refused to leave. Municipal officials argue that the building had become unfit for human habitation.
Only around 30 people judged especially vulnerable were offered temporary shelter. Local lawyers and support groups warn that many of those evicted will now sleep outside, in winter, in a region where housing costs have climbed beyond reach for low-income workers.
Safety vs. Displacement
Badalona’s conservative mayor defended the operation by pointing to a 2020 fire in a squatted industrial warehouse that killed four migrants and injured several others. Authorities say that leaving people in unsafe buildings is irresponsible, and that neighbours had long complained about fights, rubbish and fire risks.
On paper, the eviction followed legal procedure and included social services on site. States have every right to enforce building safety rules and to decide who can live and work on their territory.
Residents near B9 were not wrong to worry about fires, noise or overcrowding. Yet moving people out of view does not remove the conditions that pushed them into the school in the first place.
Many of the residents worked in agriculture, logistics or street vending across Catalonia, often without contracts and for low pay. For them, B9 was not an ideal solution, but the last available roof in a city where rents have surged and rooms are routinely shared by four or five people.
A Continental Housing Model under Strain
Badalona’s eviction took place the same week that new European data showed housing costs now consume more than 40 per cent of disposable income for almost 10 per cent of urban households across the EU. Since 2010, average house prices have risen by more than 50 per cent across the EU, with rents not far behind.
In cities such as Barcelona, local leaders describe housing costs as a crisis that threatens social cohesion. As legal rents climb, informal settlements become a pressure valve.
From Athens to Rome, squats in disused hotels, schools and factories house asylum seekers and undocumented workers who fall between emergency shelters and formal rental markets. Authorities often tolerate these spaces until a crisis, accident or redevelopment plan forces them to act.
Deciding Who Gets to Stay
The B9 clearance echoes recent operations in Paris, where police have removed homeless people and migrants from encampments ahead of major events, often bussing them out of the capital. These actions are framed as safety measures or urban renewal, yet they also decide who is visible in central neighbourhoods and who is pushed to the margins.
In Badalona, the court ruling obliged the city to provide social support, but not long-term accommodation. That gap between limited welfare obligations and the reality of people’s lives is where informal housing grows.
Those cleared from B9 still have jobs to reach, papers to renew and families to send money to. They simply no longer have a stable base.
Europe’s New Housing Promises
The European Commission has presented a strategy on affordable housing, including plans to regulate short-term rentals and encourage investment in social housing. City leaders hope this will eventually cool overheated rental markets and slow the conversion of long-term homes into holiday flats.
For people like the former B9 residents, those reforms may arrive too late. They live at the intersection of two systems: migration policies that invite their labour whilst limiting their rights, and housing markets that treat property as an asset before it is a home.
When both systems tighten, abandoned schools become the only option left.
From Evictions to Alternatives
There are other models. In some parts of Athens, solidarity groups and residents have experimented with self-managed squats for refugees, providing basic stability and community in buildings that would otherwise sit empty.
In Rome, international organisations have urged investment in long-term housing rather than repeated emergency shelters, arguing that this is more humane and ultimately cheaper. These experiments are imperfect and often contested, yet they treat housing as a social infrastructure rather than a temporary favour.
Badalona’s eviction shows the opposite route: clear the building, keep the market, and let individuals carry the consequences.
As winter settles over the Mediterranean coast, the empty B9 classrooms will likely return to silence. The people who lived there will scatter to doorways, crowded rooms and new informal camps, still working in the same regional economy that depends on their labour.
If Europe is serious about its new housing agenda, it will have to look beyond statistics and zoning laws and decide who its cities are really for.
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