Barcelona's coastal camps no longer hidden

Coastal settlements: when a €25 tent is home

In a park leading to Barceloneta, a tent bought at Lidl for €25 sums up the state of a city where rent has eaten half a paycheck. The nickname "Vátercelona" has stopped being a provocation and become a diagnosis. The issue is no longer limited to the margins: people are sleeping in Sarrià-Sant Gervasi and Pedralbes, raising the question of what kind of city remains when land is worth more than its inhabitants.

The map of homelessness no longer distinguishes neighborhoods

Camps by the sea are only the visible tip. Doorways, cardboard boxes, benches and squares complete the landscape throughout Barcelona. Comparison with Madrid offers no comfort either: as of April, dozens of people were documented sleeping on the ground in Salamanca and Chamberí, something unseen since the eighties.

The impossible arithmetic of rent

A salary of €1,400, a shared room for €400 and a tent for €25. For part of the population, camping out is not a choice but the last option after landlord requirements and prices listed on Idealista. Views clash: some argue many campers do not seek employment, while others respond that they flee countries where safety is a luxury or where remittances—like in the case of a Filipino man living on the street to support his children—sustain entire families.

An uncomfortable precedent in Can Tunis

The Montjuïc area once hosted a settlement of workers, mostly from Andalusia, occupying Can Tunis up to the gunpowder store, with a racecourse and airfield. Memory does not resolve the present but places the crisis in perspective: Barcelona has previously turned its back on neighborhoods absent from postcards. The post-Olympic city sold another image, and mass tourism eventually broke the model.

Can a city competing for premium tourists normalize dozens of tents in its parks? Madrid has already seen its own warning. Barcelona, for now, continues looking toward the coast.