La Sexta and the sewers: the extreme housing claim that falls apart

Sewers as housing: a headline that doesn't hold up

All it takes is for La Sens to announce that people are now living in the sewers for the debate on social exclusion in Spain to explode. The image is devastating, but before accepting it, it's worth looking at the layout of any modern city.

Anyone who has worked in sanitation dismisses it outright. Today's sewer collectors are not habitable passages: they are about 2.5 metres wide, have a water channel running down the middle, and are only visited by maintenance workers. There is no room for a mattress, and any rainfall turns the tunnel into a trap.

Energy poverty or the last step of exclusion?

Some reactions framed it as energy poverty. That's not quite it. Being unable to pay the electricity bill has little to do with sleeping under a grate; the problem here is the complete absence of housing. The home isn't inefficient — it simply doesn't exist.

Irony as a refuge

As often happens, the scepticism turned to dark humour. More than one person recalled that with so many empty flats around, a well-known Spanish TV host could put up those affected in his multiple properties. The jab points to the deeper question: why does the story of people sleeping under the asphalt come without any housing solutions?

The unsettling fact: collectors in modern developments are designed for water, not for people. If someone goes in there, it's not by choice; it's because the system has left them with no other options. The question is not whether the headline is literal, but why a society needs to imagine an underground hell to recognise the crisis.