How many are homeless in Barcelona?

It’s hard, perhaps impossible, to solve an issue until it’s properly addressed, and one of the subjects least talked about is often homelessness. To change this, almost a thousand volunteers filled the streets of Barcelona to quantify how many sleep on the street in the city. And according to the numbers, there are 3,055 homeless in total in the Catalan capital: 956 'sleeping rough,' meaning on the street, and 2,099 housed in centers. 

Five were in charge of canvasing Sarrià, one of Barcelona's most well-off neighborhoods: Rita, Rosa, Antoni, Rafa, and Roger. They, like the 925 others who decided to help, were organized into 287 groups to comb through the streets of the Catalan capital, in the early hours of May 17.

"The objective of the tally is to get a fixed photo of what's happening in the city Barcelona and how many people sleep on the street tonight, as well as to raise public awareness of this situation, which often suffers from great invisibility or lack of knowledge of how this happens,” explained Maite Mauricio, representative of XAPSLL, a network set up to aid the homeless in Barcelona. “That’s why we always say it’s a fine line,” warns Mauricio. “We’re all vulnerable; we can all end up in this situation.”