One afternoon a week bingo to raise money for field trips. Other, choir rehearsal. Daily, chess Cards, dominoes, newspapers and billiards. Also the TV and a small bar where you can order the “cut”. Y podiatry service Y hairdressing; and classes of basic computing. List of activities and services that would become the ABC of any grandparents’ ‘home’. Nothing of the other world, although a whole open world for the more than 100 seniors from Badalona who came to ‘casal’ of Can Mercader daily to do all those things or some. Even none of them, just to spend some time together. “The ‘casal’ is life” reads one of the banners.
What is extraordinary in this story is not what is done -was done- in this ‘marriage’, but the reactions that these activities provoked in part of the neighborhood, which took the noise produced by these grandparents to the courts; and the reaction of the judge, who decided seal off the premisesof city management, in January 2019.
Despite multiple unfulfilled promises and after several changes of mayoras of today, June 2022, the ‘casal’ is still closed and the struggle of its users to recover it, long live.
to their 74 years today, three and a half less when they closed the ‘casal’, Francesc Alis It belongs to the young people, but he has taken this fight as “something personal”, he says, angry and hurt for all those who are no longer here and will not be able to see the ‘casal’ open again, and for those who now have to spread out among bars in the area to be able to go have coffee and play cards; and for those who no longer do it because they go with the taca-taca. “All services have been lost, everything; those of the choir are going to rehearse Can Canyadó, yes, but they already have to move and they are very old; and most activities they have stopped doing forks very unfair, we do not resign ourselves; there is no right,” says Alis, who commissioned and hung a huge banner with the slogan ‘Volem el casal de Can Mercader, el casal es vida!’, banner that it lasted a very short time hanging. The next day she had disappeared.
“We cut the road twice, We yelled at the mayor, but there has been no real will to solve it,” continues the man, a resident of the residential complex on one of the ground floors of which was the ‘casal’.
In july 2020in a few days it will be two years, the City Hall of Badalona announced that the ‘casal’ would reopen in early fall (2020, that is).
“Normally”
After a meeting between the then mayor, Xavier Garcia Albiol, and the general director of the Fundació La Caixa -owner of the premises, managed by the city council– the consistory announced that they had decided that the casal “could reopen its doors after the summer [del 2020] but could not accept noisy activities, such as dancing or choral singingwhile the rest of the activities can be carried out normally.
In November 2020, when in principle it should have reopened according to the announcement that summer, the website of the City Hall of Badalona published that the works for the reopening of the ‘casal’ “would end in february [del 2021, se entiende]. “The refurbishment works of the premises are carried out by the Fundació La Caixa, owner of the premises, and consist of making general improvements to the spaces such as fixing the ceilings, windows, plumbing or painting, among others, to guarantee the comfort of the users and users”, indicated then a note from the consistory, which also said that the works “will allow their reopening with all those usual activities of the ‘casals’, but dances, parties or excessively noisy activities will be excluded, since the little height of the ceiling prevents carrying out soundproofing works”.
Impossible… impossible?
In fact, during a site visit in November 2020 Albiol stressed that they had “achieved what seemed almost impossible, to unclog the situation of the ‘casal’ with a proposal that convinces users and will not cause problems for the surrounding residents & rdquor ;. Two years after that announcement, the place is still closed with a padlock -literally- and the official poster that indicated that it was a ‘casal’ of the Fundació la Caixa is no longer there.
They do remember their past small Posters, folio size, with text “Volem the ‘casal'”, glued to the crystals.
deeper reforms
Related news
sources of City Hall of Badalona and of The Caixa they point out to this newspaper that when the agreed work began in the summer of 2020 they realized that “more in-depth actions were needed to adapt the equipment to the regulations in force in relation to the centers for the elderly; actions such as the incorporation of air extraction in the toilets or adaptations of the electrical installation and in terms of risk prevention and safety”.
The same voices assure that they are “in the final phase of this process“and hope that “soon” -without further specification- “the elders of Dog Merchant can enjoy their center again”.