Barcelona City Council wants to open a ‘shelter for homeless people with addictions’ – this is the name used in the official documentation – which will be opposite the Mas Casanovas school and a few meters from DiR Castillejos. This has been communicated to the residents of Baix Guinardó the last week of December.
However you look at it, the activity of a hostel of this type is incompatible with the pedagogical vocation of the Mas Casanovas school. The day-to-day life of this hostel also collides with the movement generated by a Mercadona supermarket and a DiR gym. That is why at DiR we open a digital query to DiR Castillejos users. The response has been overwhelming. 89% of responses say they do not want this shelter for homeless addicts where it is proposed. 11% give in favor.
This result does not criminalize or stigmatize any group. Simply, it is positioned against nonsense: making two antagonistic worlds coexist is a terrible decision.
Thus, in the same way that people addicted to alcohol and drugs must receive care and help –something that is not under discussion–, minors must always be treated as what they are: a group that needs protection, as expressed in all kinds of declarations, laws, rules and regulations. And caution is part of this protection. Therefore, we cannot protect one group by unprotecting another.
As for the specific case of the school, Mas Casanovas is a highly complex center – as described by the Department of Education itself – and is part of the Magnet Project of the Bofill Foundation. It is a support program that is only promoted in centers with students who have socioeconomic needs above what is around them. In other words, we are talking about a school that has a high concentration of children and adolescents at risk of being vulnerable, and that works with pedagogical tools that deserve attention and recognition.
It is true, the world is polyhedral, all problems deserve to have different approaches and the points for and against have to be analyzed calmly, but there are few such blatant errors. The same decision explains it and it is certified by the result of the survey among DiR Castillejos users.
It is evident that this time the City Council has not assessed all the conditions that must be taken into account, such as, for example, the fact that adding those from the school and those who come to the DiR gym, more than 500 boys and girls under eighteen.
So, it’s time to do things right. When a decision is wrong, the best thing to do is rectify it. When it comes to solving bungling there is no such direct shortcut. We are a society that lives stubbornly. We are not educated in admitting error and, when this is the case, it is difficult for us to rectify naturally.
Even so, this time it is time to rectify because this time the error is of such magnitude that common sense asks to put the Stop. The project to install the Shelter for homeless people with addictions, in front of a school, must be stopped urgently. It is about rectifying and leaving this project on a dead letter.
Neither winners nor losers. May the children win. Mayor Ada Colau would have to recover her memory and listen to the neighborhood fights. If it did, the City Council would correct the error. This time it is not about political colors, it is about the protection of minors.
Ramon Cinnamon
The entry The reasons for a NO appears first in Self Defense Blog.