Three families from El Masnou (Maresme) report that they have been living without water supply in their homes for months, a situation that, they assure, has worsened in the middle of a heatwave, in a situation they judge as “unbearable”. The Baix Maresme Housing Union demands an urgent response to guarantee a basic service to these homes, while the City Council maintains that “no one has had their water cut off” and announces the approval of an instruction that will allow the installation of provisional social meters in certain cases.
One of those affected, Abdelmoghit el Fakir, explains that he, his wife, and their 17-year-old son have been without running water in a single-family home for almost a year. Yesterday, once his case gained media relevance, they began to reactivate the service for him. But, he recounts, since the supply interruption occurred, he had initiated numerous procedures with the City Council, the municipal company that manages water, and social services, without obtaining a solution. “Each time they told me something different,” he laments. He explains that the family depended on water bottles they filled with the help of members of the Sindicat d’Habitatge, traveling to a fountain in Premià de Mar to cover their most basic needs.
Vulnerable families using social services
The affected person, who works in a cooperative, maintains that he is in the process of regularizing his residential situation through social housing and argues that he is willing to assume the cost of water consumption. “I wasn’t asking for it to be free, just for them to connect the water,” he assures. He also denounces that, without the union’s support, it would have been very difficult for him to process the documentation: “Every time I went to the city council, I noticed they looked at me badly.” El Fakir adds that at the public company “they asked me for a mayoral decree, and at the mayor’s office, they didn’t want to receive me. How was I supposed to do it?” he says.
The Baix Maresme Housing Union assures that in the city of El Masnou, it has detected at least three families in this situation. Among them, a single mother with four minor children and another where a woman of about 80 years old lives, who also periodically resorts to public fountains for water supply. All are users of municipal social services.
According to the union, weeks ago it submitted a request to the city council demanding that water supply be guaranteed to these families. Activists assure that they have not yet received a formal response on the three cases, although they believe that some procedures have started to move in recent days.
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The El Masnou City Council offers another version. In the response provided to this newspaper, it states that “no one has had their water cut off.” The municipal government reports that it has prepared an instruction for the installation of provisional social water meters on a precarious basis, intended for homes occupied by families at risk of residential exclusion. The document was scheduled to be approved at the local government board meeting on July 16 and, once in force, will allow this social support mechanism to be activated, “always taking into account the complexity involved in this action.”
The City Council assures that social services address all situations of vulnerability of which they are aware and work to find solutions. Meanwhile, the affected families and the Sindicat d’Habitatge demand that the announced measures translate into an immediate and effective solution.
The ordeal of the three families from El Masnou coincides with the process of municipalization of the water service in El Masnou. The public company Sumem began to assume its management in 2025, after the City Council approved the creation of the municipal company. According to the Sindicat d’Habitatge, the commission to promote this company was established in 2019, but its launch was not approved until 2024, and it has been managing the service for about eight months. The entity maintains that during this period, the affected families have continued without resolving their situation despite the efforts made.
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