Cars are becoming home to the victims of the Spanish pandemic

PAMPLONA, Spain (AP) – When the social worker called to tell Javier Irure that he was being evicted, the 65-year-old Spaniard could not understand that he could end up homeless after five decades of manual labor.

“I took some clothes, some books and other things, wrapped them in a sheet and said to myself, ‘I have another roof to roll over: my car,'” Irure said inside the old compact Renault Clio. has been his shelter for the past three months.

Irure belongs to the multitude of economic victims of the coronavirus pandemic. He managed to avoid obtaining COVID-19, but the slowdown in the workforce caused by traffic restrictions and social activities imposed by the Spanish government to control the spread of the virus proved lethal to its financial stability.

Irure, who started working at the age of 13 as a hotel bell, was working as a professional cleaning agent when the pandemic hit Spain last year and drained her sources of income. It wasn’t long before Irure left her rented apartment.

He tried to get help from public social services, but relied on help from local charity group Ayuda Mutua.

“You feel like a pendulum” dealing with the official bureaucracy, said Irure. “Going from one window to another, from unanswered calls to vague promises.”

The pandemic has been particularly severe for Spain’s economy due to its dependence on tourism and the services sector. The country’s left-wing government has maintained a program to reduce the impact, but more than a million jobs have been eliminated.

While close families have supported many citizens who might otherwise have become poor, limiting people at home has also strained Spanish family life, as seen in rising divorce rates. The breakdown of households left many individuals on their own.

The Catholic aid organization Cáritas Española said earlier this month that more than half a million people, or 26% of all aid recipients, have been asking for help since the beginning of the pandemic. Caritas has opened 13 homeless care centers since the pandemic began.

Like Irure, Juan Jiménez had no choice but to live in his car, a used Ford where he slept for almost a year.

Jiménez, 60, saw his mortgage payments fall out of control and his marriage collapsed after he and his wife bought a larger house. The 620 euros ($ 740) he received in government aid in recent months was for his seven children, he said.

“I dreamed of having all my children under one roof, but it’s better to be here,” Jiménez said. “They have their lives and I would just be a problem.”

Jiménez and Irure move their cars from one parking lot to another on the outskirts of Pamplona in northern Spain, where they once had houses. They do it to avoid drawing attention to themselves.

“When I wake up in the morning, I wonder, ‘What am I doing here?’ Jiménez said from his car, which is full of clothes, blankets and bags filled with everything he has.

“We are invisible beings. Nobody wants to look at us. Nobody wants to know anything about us, “he said. “We don’t exist.”

___

AP writer Joseph Wilson contributed to this report from Barcelona.

___

Follow the coverage of the AP pandemic at:

https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic

https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-vaccine

https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak