Barcelona homeless in the time of Corona
Spain’s streets are largely deserted.
As one of the world’s worst-hit countries by the new coronavirus, the government has ordered a national lockdown.
Photos and text by Emilio Morenatti
In Barcelona, in the northeast of the country, sleeping figures with boxes and blankets punctuate the mostly empty city.
“I am not afraid of the virus because my physical condition is very good. If I caught the virus, my body would expel it as if it were a gastroenteritis.”
They are Barcelona’s homeless, and there are about 1,000 of them.
Most lie on cardboard, others have mattresses or tents. They dot the narrow streets and the doorways of now-closed stores.
“I used to earn enough money to eat every day, now I don’t get even one meal a day. Now I play the guitar just for me as nobody is in the street.”
The bare streets accentuate their isolation.
Many of the city's day centers and soup kitchens for the homeless have closed or reduced their opening hours.
Shelters and social cafeterias have closed or are operating partly due to virus outbreak.
“It is as if there has been a nuclear explosion and they are all sheltering in the bunker. Only us, the homeless, are left out. ”
Many homeless in the city are left with little food, poor hygiene and nowhere to go making them extremely vulnerable not just to the virus but to other threats as well.
Authorities are scrambling to get as many homeless people off the streets.
But they want to do this without cramming them into a shelter, where the spread of COVID-19 could be even greater.
“I thought I had seen everything during all these years sleeping in the street, but no. This silence on the street all day scares me... more than the virus itself ...”
The only noise on the city streets is made by the motorcycles of the municipal police.
Those sleeping rough in Barcelona agree on one thing: begging is pointless, because there’s nobody around to give them anything.
“I refuse! I am not going to be infested with the virus anywhere, I am safe here in the arcade. ”
Text from the AP News story, AP PHOTOS: Virus accentuates isolation of Spain's homeless, by Emilio Morenatti.
Photos by Emilio Morenatti
Nat Castañeda
Visual artist and Digital Storyteller at The Associated Press
