Casa Orsola is a symbol. Purchased by the Catalan investment fund Lioness Inversiones in 2021, this modernist building in the Eixample district of central Barcelona embodies the housing crisis, real estate speculation and gentrification of this Mediterranean city. It also represents the revolt of the middle class, unable to afford housing at market prices, embodied by the handful of tenants who have refused to move out, starting with Josep Torrent, a math teacher at a secondary school on the outskirts of Barcelona, who has rented the same apartment for 22 years.
The 49-year-old was paying 700 euros a month in rent when he received notice from his new landlord, the Lioness Inversiones fund, that his contract, like those of his neighbors, would not be renewed. Bailiffs were due to evict him on January 31. Thousands of people gathered in front of the building to prevent the judicial intervention. All the city’s housing rights activists, residents’ associations and tenants’ platforms denounced the investment fund’s speculative operation, which had already begun to transform apartments into seasonal rental apartments (for less than a year), at around 2,800 euros a month according to the neighbors. And they forced the court to set a new date. On February 3, social mobilization led to a further postponement.
You have 63.38% of this article left to read. The rest is for subscribers only.