Cars become home to Spain’s pandemic victims

PAMPLONA, Spain (AP) – When the social worker called to tell Javier Irure that he was being evicted, the 65-year-old Spaniard did not imagine that he could end up homeless after five decades of manual labor.

“I took some clothes, some books and other things, wrapped them in a sheet and said to myself, ‘I have one more roof to put over my head: my car,’” said Irure from inside the old compact Renault Clio. it has been your shelter for the past three months.

Irure belongs to the multitude of economic victims of the coronavirus pandemic. He managed to avoid COVID-19, but the slowdown in labor caused by restrictions on movement and social activities that the Spanish government imposed to control the spread of the virus was lethal to its financial stability.

Irure, who started working at the age of 13 as a hotel porter, was working as a professional janitor when the pandemic hit Spain last year and dried up her sources of income. It didn’t take long for Irure to be expelled from his rented apartment.

He tried to get help from public social services, but he has the help of the local charity group Ayuda Mutua.

“You feel like a pendulum” dealing with official bureaucracy, said Irure. “Going from one window to another, from calls that are never answered to vague promises”.

The pandemic was particularly hard on Spain’s economy due to its dependence on tourism and the service sector. The country’s leftist government maintained a leave program to reduce the impact, but more than a million jobs have been eliminated.

Although close-knit families have supported many citizens who might otherwise have ended up in poverty, confining people at home has also harmed Spanish family life, as seen in an increase in divorce rates. The division of families left more individuals on their own.

Catholic humanitarian organization Cáritas Española said earlier this month that about half a million more people, or 26% of all its beneficiaries, had asked for help since the pandemic began. Caritas has opened 13 centers dedicated to assisting homeless people since the beginning of the pandemic.

Like Irure, Juan Jiménez had no choice but to live in his car, a used Ford, where he slept for almost a year.

Jiménez, 60, saw his mortgage payments go out of control and his marriage collapsed after he and his wife bought a bigger house. The 620 euros ($ 740) he received in aid from the government in recent months went to his seven children, he said.

“I dream of having all my children under one roof, but I better be here,” said Jiménez. “They have their lives and I would just be a problem.”

Jiménez and Irure move their cars from one parking space to another on the outskirts of the city of Pamplona, ​​in northern Spain, where they used to live. They do this to avoid drawing attention to themselves.

“When I wake up in the morning, I ask myself, ‘What am I doing here?’” Jiménez said of his car, which is crammed with clothes, blankets and bags full of everything he owns.

“We are invisible beings. Nobody wants to look at us. Nobody wants to know anything about us, ”he said. “We don’t exist.”

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AP writer Joseph Wilson contributed to this Barcelona report.

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