Photo by Ben Cooke
There’s a permanent sense of fear in certain areas of the Raval. A growing problem of drug dealers operating from vacant residential apartments, dubbed narcopisos, in the neighborhood means local residents and businesses are living with a constant flow of dealers and clientele waiting for their next hit. The resulting violence and disturbance both day and night has created a tense situation.
The issue is not new, but has been steadily brewing. Drug dealers and users have been infiltrating the neighborhood's empty apartments and buildings since the financial crisis a decade ago, using them as distribution points and makeshift drug dens. An article published in La Vanguardia in February of this year reported that there are an estimated 50 active narcopisos in the Raval, posing a serious security and public health issue. A further 228 vacant properties are considered vulnerable to being appropriated by drug dealers. According to the city council, there are four zones severely affected by the narcopiso problem, which include some of the city’s prime tourist attractions: La Boqueria, the MACBA, the CCCB and La Rambla.
Raval residents are rising up to take back their homes and the streets. Acció Raval, a local association established in 2016 to represent the community interests of Raval residents, published a map in January of this year pinpointing known narcopisos in the neighborhood. It has also been organizing public demonstrations and events to raise awareness of the issue. On January 17th, residents of Carrer de la Reina Amàlia organized a protest calling on the owners of the occupied apartments to take action. It’s the latest in a spate of similar demonstrations over recent months. The group also organizes regular meetings to discuss current problems and collaborative actions to deal with them, ranging from the symbolic hanging of red rags from street lights to instigating caceroladas (a collective banging of saucepans in protest), which they believe forces the issue onto the agenda of the government and the press.
Residents who have lived in the area for several decades are concerned that the situation could regress to how it was in the Eighties. Heroin addiction and the misuse of other drugs became a major problem in Spain in the late Seventies, when an economic boom and increased trading with overseas drug traffickers meant that citizens had money and access to harmful substances. Cocaine and heroin were only classified as ‘hard’ drugs in the reformation of the Penal Code in 1985, by which time it was already too late to stop the epidemic. In Barcelona, the Raval, or Barrio Chino, was the worse affected area due to its already-established reputation as the red-light district. The drug epidemic also brought violent crime to the area, which was only resolved towards the end of the Eighties as part of a concerted effort by the Ajuntament to clean up the city before the 1992 Olympic Games. Since the Nineties, the rate of drug use in the city has decreased, spiking slightly between 2003 and 2010 before decreasing again and plateauing since 2014.
But the current issue goes beyond the drugs and the dealers to housing and real estate. Why are there so many vacant apartments in the prime, high-density neighborhoods of Barcelona?
When the financial crisis struck, many residents who had bought houses at pre-2008 prices defaulted on their mortgages. According to Vidas Hipotecadas (2012), co-authored by the current mayor of Barcelona, Ada Colau, in Barcelona alone, more than 65,000 properties were repossessed between 2008 and 2011. This comprised around 19 percent of the total number of repossessions across Spain during that period. As a result, many of the vacant apartments are now owned by banks and investment funds.
Photo by Ben Cooke
Felipe Ibarra, founder of the Ateneu de Raval (Carrer de la Reina Amàlia 3), is critical of investors and banks. The Chilean architect founded the community center three years ago, but has lived in the neighbourhood for more than 10 years. Ibarra believes that foreign speculation, investors buying up property to lease for profit, and banks retaining properties to increase revenue have caused rents to rise dramatically. Furthermore, he stated that they have “taken advantage of the many immigrants living in the area, including those who have a lower level of education and socioeconomic status, who are more susceptible to falling victim [to inequitable rental prices]. Usually the owners of these flats are those that want to make maximum returns with minimum investment and are not concerned about the social welfare of local residents.”
Investors don’t seem to have been deterred by the narcopisos problem. The latest apartment development at Carrer de la Cera 53-55, right in the heart of Zone 2, is due for completion by June 2018. With prices ranging from €315,000 for a one-bedroom apartment (53m2) to €635,000 for a two-bedroom apartment (147m2), it is the most ambitious building project to date in the Raval, with a price per square metre (€4,300-€6,000) well above the average.
Murals in the neighborhood's public spaces demonstrate how strongly residents feel about these issues. In Plaça de Terenci Moix, a mural painted by a group of local residents just behind the CCCB conveys hard-hitting messages, such as "Raval is not for sale," "Stay out speculators" and "Stay out drug traffickers." Meanwhile, a billboard hoisted above the Doña Rosa bar just outside the MACBA states the neighborhood will not tolerate "real estate violence," ‘speculation," "inaccessible rental properties" or "evictions."
Derek, a Dutch investor who purchased two flats and renovated them to let—on Carrer de l'Hospital and Carrer del Marquès de Barberà, respectively—commented that while the social issues are frustrating, the area’s historic features and its central location override doubts about public health and security from an investor’s perspective. “We did some superficial research, but it’s always hard as you never know where all the problems are. It turns out that there’s [a narcopiso] across the street and it’s terrible the scenes we have witnessed. I feel sorry for the neighbors, some of whom have small kids,” he said. He’s realistic about the situation and the improbability of any immediate action, but believes the responsibility lies with the officials: “We hope the Ajuntament, police, etc. take responsibility as people pay a lot of taxes to feel safe. There’s no role for investors here, it’s a public administration matter, not something for the private sector.”
During 2017, the police seized 36 narcopisos and arrested 48 people found inside or connected with the properties. But bureaucratic processes can hinder progress. Even with consistent interventions, the police can only do so much. If a drug dealer occupies an apartment without permission, the police can enter and detain the inhabitants or, if they are caught red-handed dealing drugs, they can be arrested. However, due to the considerable rights afforded to squatters by law, the police have to demonstrate without doubt that a crime has been committed in the flat and, even so, judges often err on the side of caution.
Concerned residents and police are pushing for further action to be taken against drug traffickers, which may require a reinterpretation of the law. They want judges to issue eviction orders as standard if it can be demonstrated that the apartments in question are being used for selling and using drugs illegally. Benito Granados, the head of the Guàrdia Urbana in the Ciutat Vella, said in a February 2018 La Vanguardia article, “If we can prove that the flat was used as a platform for drug trafficking, we can ask the judge to close it as an extra security measure.” If drug dealers re-enter a closed property the police also have the right to enter and detain the inhabitants. “We therefore have a guarantee that the apartment cannot be re-occupied,” stated the deputy head of Mossos d'Esquadra of the Ciutat Vella, Miquel Hernández. Whether this will be enough to deter drug dealers remains to be seen.
So what is the city council doing about the situation? “The Ajuntament has been implementing an emergency plan since summer 2017 and recently compiled a report of all actions and interventions to date,” said Noelia Vida Marin, a press representative of the mayor. Since then, more than €1 million has been dedicated to tackling the problem, which has been used to form a team to search the Raval for empty homes and reinforce the police presence in the area. They have also invested in drug-related education and increased the hours of the Centre d’Atenció Sociosanitària clinic on Avinguda de les Drassanes. To deal with the more complex, long-term issue of releasing vacant flats into the public housing stock for rental, the Ajuntament has attempted to negotiate with owners.
Between October 2017 and February 2018, the number of properties whose owners are in negotiations with the Ajuntament has increased from 128 to 269. Thirty-six apartments have been voluntarily ceded to the city council, and a further 169 owners have been contacted. However, 187 owners were unreachable.
Other measures have been taken in recent years to stop the rising number of vacant properties. In 2014, the Catalan government introduced a fine for bank-owned properties left empty for more than two years. The Empty Housing Tax (Ley 14/2015, Impost sobre els habitatges buits), which came into effect in July 2015, was related to permanently vacant properties owned by banks. In 2014, approximately 40,000 empty flats were owned by financial establishments, concentrated in the hubs of Barcelona, Tarragona, Lleida and Girona.
Banks were fined €5,000 per apartment, and were given a month to find tenants or face an additional charge of €10,000. If no action was taken after two months, they could face another fine of up to €15,000. Built into the law were generous incentives for the banks to release the properties for social housing. Recently, however, this law has been overturned by the Tribunal Court in Madrid, which declared the tax 'unconstitutional' following modifications to the law in 2016 to include all property owners.
Photo by Ben Cooke
But even if drug traffickers are evicted permanently and the narcopiso problem is eliminated, what will happen to the users and addicts? Moving them out of the Raval could simply mean more open drug use on the streets or in a different neighborhood. Either that, or the drug dealers will be forced deeper underground, which would increase public health and security issues, bolster the black market and only serve to move the drug problem elsewhere.
Ultimately, Ibarra believes that it is up to the authorities to do something, but realizes that the law is open to interpretation. “Narcopisos that have been reported at least once should automatically pass into the social housing stock,” he proposed. He believes that the police and the Ajuntament are doing a good job, but that the problem will only be solved if empty flats are outlawed. A strong advocate of coordinated community action, he is part of a community platform which advocates the introduction of a tax aimed at limiting the number of properties any one owner (individual, bank or investor) can have.
The city council maintains that there is a clear strategy being implemented in collaboration with the police, the justice system, citizen platforms and other stakeholders. At a meeting on February 22nd, 2018, attended by Gala Pin (Councillor for the Ciutat Vella District), the PAH (Platform for Persons Affected by Mortgages), the Mossos d'Esquadra and the Guàrdia Urbana, Colau stated: “We are doing everything we can according to the power we have, and are contacting all the owners of the vacant apartments to convince them to allocate the properties to social housing. I am making this issue a priority.”