The homeless people of Madrid’s Barajas airport: ‘I’m sick of sleeping on the floor’

IN DEPTH: How bad is Spain's homelessness problem?

Following news that hundreds of homeless people are now sleeping rough in Madrid's Barajas Airport, The Local looks at how serious Spain's homelessness problem has become and how it compares to other countries.

At the age of 26, Ale, as her fatigue companions call her, spends the dead hours at the bottom of a corridor of the T4 of Barajas, where she arrived five days ago guided by a volunteer of Caritas. Her story, calm but sharp, is only altered by the presence of a couple of television cameras, faithful pilgrimage of a subject that is on the way, at least mediaally, to becoming a kind of “walking circus”. “We don’t want to be recorded”, protests this…

What began being a large group of sintecho that spent night after night at level 1 of the T4 of the airport Adolfo Suárez Madrid-Barajas has ended with...

The homeless people of Madrid’s Barajas airport: ‘I’m sick of sleeping on the floor’

Between 300 and 400 homeless people sleep each night at Madrid’s Barajas Airport. The number has reached as many as 500. No one knew who they were until a religious organization — Mesa de la Hospitalidad, which includes Caritas — took the initiative to carry out a census. Nearly three months after the issue emerged, the report was presented this Monday to municipal, regional, and national authorities. Seguir leyendo

People who “live” at Barajas airport, as in so many others, are the reflection of a fundamental problem: the constant increase of homelessness in the face of the increase in access to housing.Topics: News, Homelessness, Airports, Social RightsRead full article

Far from being solved, in the situation created around half a thousand homeless people who spend the night in the terminal T4 of the Airport Adolfo Suárez Madrid-Barajas does not seem to be at an end. The problem is also serving for a new confrontation between administrations of different color with a daily crossover of reproaches between the Government, on the one hand, and the Community and the City of Madrid, on the other.