The newcomers to Ripoll Not only do they suffer obstacles and long waits to register. There are those who, directly, have not been able nor submit your application to start procedures and become full citizens. “At the town hall they tell us that they don’t register us,” they tell EL PERIÓDICO several families recent arrivals from Latin American countries who must apply political asylum but they cannot start the procedures because they do not have access to the registry. These families live in rented rooms. For them, the law contemplates the figure of social register. However, the ultra mayor of Ripoll, Silvia Orriols, The social register does not apply, provided for people without a fixed address, whether it be rooms or even the street. Some fifty Catalan town councils refuse to accept the social register.
Orriols’ refusal to apply the social registry leaves Latino asylum-seeking families living in rented rooms without options
Grays Dayana Prada arrived in Ripoll on August 28 with his two children: Johan Sebastian, 13 years old, and Jacobo, 6. They left Bogota Colombia)fleeing street violence and hoping for a better life with his father, Oscar Leandro, an asylum seeker who has been living and working in the capital of Ripollès for two years. The family lives in one room, sharing a flat with more compatriots in similar conditions. They pay 150 euros a month. “My husband and I work part-time in Ripoll: he as a painter and I clean houses and take care of grandparents… we can’t afford to pay rent. Hopefully we buy food,” Prada summarizes.
The law obliges city councils to register those neighbors who live in rented rooms or even on the street
Without a registry there is no asylum
At the beginning of August, the mother continues, they went to register in Ripoll. An essential procedure to access public health, children’s schooling and, where appropriate, obtain legal residence and a work permit in Spain. According to the mother, the central government asks them to register to request political asylum in Spain. “But at the town hall they told us that we cannot register until we have a rental contract. If you don’t have one, they won’t register you,” explains Prada. At that moment, the woman asked how they could do it, given that it is not feasible for them to pay the prices of apartments in the rental market. “They gave me a paper to request a social rental apartment but we are in the same situation, they ask for your registry… so nothing,” she adds desperately.
The case of this Colombian family is identical to that of Luis Olivares and Nazareth Rebolledofrom Venezuela. His father arrived more than a year ago in Barcelona, a city where he is registered and where he slept on the street for several months. He managed to get off the asphalt thanks to a friend, who offered him a job and a roof in Ripoll in a sublet room. In June 2022, his wife, Nazareth, arrived. They lived in a room without a rental contract but the woman managed to register in Ripoll because the ultra mayor had not yet taken control of the city council or changed the procedures for the process.
The couple thus settled in Ripoll. After months of working without a contract in construction, he managed to process the asylum request for humanitarian reasons. He now has a residence and work permit and has obtained a replacement contract doing cleaning work at the Doctor Ramon Suriñach special education center in Ripoll, where he charges 924 euros per month. The mother has also started the procedures to be a refugee and in April she will obtain the definitive document that will allow her to live and work legally in Spain. Until then she works part-time cleaning floors or caring for the elderly in Ripoll. “With what we earn we can’t pay for an apartment, they ask for a three-month deposit… we can’t pay it,” insists the father, who owes money borrowed from neighbors and friends to buy food.
The marriage therefore has its procedures well underway. Not so their sons Liscandrys, 15, and Arnaldo, 13, who arrived in Ripoll in December by virtue of the family reunification. “They tell us that they cannot register the children, that they are not allowed to do so. That if we do not have a rental contract we cannot,” the mother continues. The family desperately tried to rent an apartment in Ripoll. They paid 600 euros and fixed the house, which was in poor condition. “It is clear that it was a scam, that the apartment was occupied: they evicted us on December 31,” they explain.
Despite having family reunification and paperwork in process, Nazareth and Luis cannot get Ripoll to register their minor children.
Now they live in a borrowed attic with no shower, no hot water, no heating and no occupancy certificate. They do not rule out turning to the registration mafias when they have money to pay them. “In the end it is a wheel, a circuit, that leaves you without rights and nothing,” the woman says.
This wheel could break if the Ripoll City Council the registry without a fixed address will apply. A procedure established by the state registration law, which obliges city councils to register all those inhabitants who do not have a rental or ownership contract for a home. It is valid for people who live in rooms, in places without a occupancy certificate -as is the case of these families-, in shacks, in caves or on the street. Ripoll is not the only Catalan municipality that does not apply the social register.
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Prada’s children have already started going to school, but Olivares’ children are still in the process of be admitted to the institute. “We spend the day locked up at home. In bed, sleeping,” admits her eldest daughter, 15 years old, without a social circle in Ripoll and with obvious signs of discouragement. The toothache that she has been suffering for days does not help her well-being. This teenager has also not been able to receive care in public health, as her mother explains that she combats the suffering of her daughter with infusions and prayers.
The lack of health care, another consequence of the lack of registration, is also suffered by his brother Arnaldo. And also Prada’s two children. Both families self-medicate their children as best they can to combat pain or fever. “You feel that the city council wants you out of here,” laments Leandro, who appreciates the neighborhood solidarity but regrets all the impediments imposed by the new ultra mayor.