One of the worst experiences is having neighbors who make coexistence impossible. And if, in addition, they set up a drug den where dozens of people come to take drugs, destroy common areas, tamper with water and electricity, and steal from and threaten the other tenants of the building, the situation becomes horrible.
Read more Police pressure alleviates the distress of the residents of the building on Muntaner Street
Well, this is what the neighbors of a building on Muntaner Street, in the center of Barcelona, have been suffering for more than a year, as you have read in our newspaper this week. The tenant community has reported these incidents to the police, the City Council, and the court. They live so terrified that they have hired a night security guard costing them 2,800 euros per month and have installed cameras and other self-protection measures due to the absence of a legal solution.
This week they made their particular hell public on RAC1 and La Vanguardia with a positive outcome because something has started to change. The electric company has disconnected the tampering, and the police have deployed to make life less pleasant for the occupants of the drug flat. Drug flat? This concept causes so much terror to the police authorities that they ask us not to use it, claiming that this residence on Muntaner Street is something else. And what is it officially? “A flat where drugs are consumed and trafficked,” despite the linguistic definition of drug flat being “A dwelling, generally illegally occupied or ceded, used as a center for retail sale and consumption of drugs.”
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If there is no difference, why don’t they want to call it that? To avoid fueling the thesis that the effective police pressure in the Raval neighborhood, a Barcelona stronghold of drug flats, moves the drug market to quieter places like the Eixample. Let’s hope this is not the case and that in this instance the countless rules and laws currently violated in that flat are urgently enforced. On the other hand, the City Council has threatened the neighbors with a fine if they do not immediately carry out a mandatory renovation of the building’s facade. The neighbors respond that they have spent part of the special assessment for this work on paying the security guard and ask for time because placing scaffolding now would facilitate the entry of these undesirables into their homes. The City Council should be more understanding.
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