Two sisters in Barcelona die by suicide hours before being evicted for not paying rent

Two sisters in Barcelona took their own lives in the early hours of Monday morning, hours before they were to be evicted for non-payment of rent.

The two women, who lived in the Sant Andreu neighborhood, had accumulated a debt of €9,000 over two years.

City officials were notified of the case by the judge and made several visits to the property, leaving messages, but were never able to contact them.

According to the court, the owner of the property sued the tenants in May 2023 after nearly two years of non-payment of rent.

Barcelona's mayor, Jaume Collboni, said it was a "tragedy" and offered his condolences to the families.

"It is the hardest and most dramatic reality of a problem and a challenge that we have in our society: access to housing," he said.

Collboni has defended the need to guarantee access to housing and has called for "responsibility" and "more funds" from the Spanish and Catalan governments.

The tragedy occurred on the day it was revealed that Barcelona rents reached another all-time high of nearly €2,000 per month in the first quarter of 2024.

Rents in the Catalan capital have not stopped rising since 2021, despite attempts to regulate them.