Скачать или смотреть Spanish police evict hundreds of migrants from squat deemed unsafe

(17 Dec 2025)

FOR CLEAN VERSION SEE STORY NUMBER: 4624846

RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Badalona, Spain - 17 December 2025
1. Various of evicted residents moving towards exit dragging suitcases
2. SOUNDBITE (Spanish) Younous Drame, Senegalese resident:
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"With sorrow and frustration, we see that we haven't received any help from the administration, even though they should help us as human beings. But we haven't been offered anything, and they simply tell us that we have to leave and see what happens while we end up living on the street this winter, regardless of Christmas. All we want to ask is to be allowed to stay here until after Christmas or the cold weather passes. But they don't want to listen to that either. I don't know what kind of heart they have. It seems heartless to evict 400 people in the middle of winter. This person must have a very hard heart to do that."
3. Various of police line as evicted residents leave
4. Various of residents preparing belongings before leaving
5. Evicted occupants carrying belongings towards exit
STORYLINE:
Police in northeastern Spain carried out eviction orders Wednesday to clear an abandoned school building where hundreds of mostly undocumented migrants were living in a squat north of Barcelona.

Knowing that the eviction in the middle of winter was coming, most of the occupants had left to try to find other shelter before police in riot gear from Catalonia's regional police entered the school’s premises early in the morning under court orders.

Judicial authorities had ruled the building was unsafe.

While the eviction was completed without violence, there were moments of tension when people who were losing their homes had to walk past armored officers.

“Putting 400 people onto the street in winter just before Christmas, you have to have a hard heart to do that,” said Younous Drame, a 50-year-old man from Senegal who was among those forced to leave.

The squat was located in Badalona, a working class city that borders Barcelona.

Many sub-Saharan migrants, mostly from Senegal and Gambia, had moved into the empty school building since it was left abandoned in 2023.

AP video by Emilio Morenatti

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