If you don’t live anywhere you don’t exist. Even if you are apparently alive, even if you breathe, even if you suffer, even if you smile at times, even if you kiss your children, even if you rack your brain so that your family can eat. All that doesn’t matter. You are invisible and invisible people have no rights. The obstacles that some city councils consciously place on migrants in our country to obtain the registration constitute one of the cruelest forms of dehumanization possible. It’s also illegal, but that doesn’t seem to matter too much.
The Law 7/1985, regulating the Bases of the Local Regime, is clear regarding the obligation to register all citizens in the municipality in which they reside, regardless of the state or type of housing. Regardless of the legal-private disputes over its ownership. Regardless of whether the residence is a penthouse with a pool or a park bench, an apartment in a random neighborhood or a shanty in a settlement. All residents in a municipality are its neighbors, but, However, some town councils select residents who can officially be residents. The discard is obvious.
The erasure of politically rejected neighbors is, furthermore, cowardly because it is practiced using the most useful of deterrent tools: bureaucracy.
I remember a successful series of social simulation video games, ‘The Sims’, whose objective was build perfect neighborhoods, with houses inhabited by idyllic families who fulfilled all their dreams. I think about the similarities between the video game and the practical sibyllines of some town halls. Spooky.
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And this is how to you who do not exist even if you live, your city council is telling you that You do not have the right to medical assistance, that you cannot send your children to school, that you cannot register as a job seeker.
Because to you who live even if you do not exist, your city council is telling you that perhaps you exist, but You won’t be able to live.