Bacary Camará, 35 years old, from Senegal, covers his face at the door of the cafeteria set up outside the temporary shelter set up by the Níjar (Almería) City Council after the eviction of the El Walili camp.Santi Donaire
Life does not stop hitting Bacaly Camara, a 35-year-old Senegalese.
With a coffee in hand, leaning against the frame of a prefabricated module, he recounts the armed conflict in which his parents were killed and how he was forced to leave his country to get money for his family.
He has a wife and three children, but he never got to know the youngest, who is three years old.
His partner was pregnant when he flew to Morocco and from there he got on a boat heading to Motril, on the coast of Granada.
He later went to Almería in search of employment in intensive agriculture.
This Monday morning his boss called him to ask why he had not come to his job.
"They are throwing me out of the house," he explained by phone as a bulldozer knocked down the shack where he lived in the Walili settlement, where some 450 people lived so far.
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The eviction of the El Walili de Níjar settlement, in pictures
The demolition comes after many protests by social groups and many other attempts by the municipality to make one of the oldest settlements in a region disappear, near Cabo de Gata, where there are almost fifty similar spaces.
It is an arid area covered by greenhouses that supply Europe with vegetables, which for years have become the main economic engine of Almería with a turnover that exceeds 3,000 million euros per year throughout the province.
Part of its workforce resides in these types of camps, which house more than 3,000 people in the municipality of Níjar alone, the one with the lowest income in Spain according to the National Institute of Statistics.
They survive in small rooms built from pallets, cardboard and plastic on the mud.
Walili's are already on the ground, turned into rubble.
After 8:30 in the morning, fifty Civil Guard agents set up a chain next to the San José highway to ensure the work of the excavator could proceed with the demolition, a task that was already completed by noon.
Shortly after, the mayoress congratulated herself on the eviction in a statement: "It has been the greatest show of commitment to the defense of human rights that we have seen in Almería in many, many years."
Some of its inhabitants looked with desolation at the advance of the pickaxe or the fire — whose origin was unknown, according to the firefighters — that consumed some substandard housing first thing in the morning.
They were watching from the side of the road and surrounded by plastic bags and suitcases in which they had stored their belongings.
"There he lived very poorly, but he was close to work," says Falai Baldeh, 21, who traveled from Gambia to Libya to get on a boat to Italy.
He spent a year in Turin, crossed the border on foot to France and arrived in Spain by train.
He had been in Walili for two years until he was expelled this morning.
“I dedicate myself to tomato, zucchini, eggplant, pepper.
Many hours, but always without a contract, ”he clarified hours later from the same prefabricated module in which Bacaly Camara drank his coffee.
Both calculated options to go to work tomorrow.
“Anyway, I have to get there.
If I have to sleep on the street, I'll do it, but I can't lose my job”, stressed the Senegalese.
Falai Baldeh, 21, from The Gambia, at the entrance to the temporary camp set up between the Níjar City Council and various NGOs after the eviction of the El Walili camp.Santi Donaire
Like them, some 60 people showed uncertainty about the emergency center to which they were transferred by bus at the initiative of the Níjar City Council (all North African or sub-Saharan men, because the only four women who needed a roof were housed in a hostel).
With a capacity for 500 people, the goal was to relocate there the around 200 inhabitants of the settlement according to municipal calculations, although the social organizations increased the figure to 450. During the weekend, most of the camp's residents moved to other nearby with the same characteristics, such as Atochares or Barranquete.
Only a few needed a roof in the municipal space, made up of modules for families and a handful of bunk beds deployed in an industrial warehouse.
Those responsible did not allow the press to know the conditions in which the cots or the bathrooms were.
In the presence of the media, they closed the doors tightly.
The social entities that work in the area called for a progressive and individualized eviction "with public deliberation and participation of the people concerned", as emphasized by the Almeria Secretariat for Migration.
The organizations believe that in a few days few people will remain there, since the building is far from their jobs.
"I don't know if I'll be able to stay: the greenhouse is very far away," confirms Baldeh.
"I don't know how I'm going to go to work tomorrow either," added the 39-year-old Senegalese El Hadji Diatta indignantly.
"Businessmen call you because they need you, but they don't pay well, they don't help you find housing, or anything," he added.
He, like most of those who live in these settlements, has no documentation.
And his wages are around four or five euros an hour.
“We are enduring a lot because it is the only way to get the papers.
They have promised me a contract when I have them, ”adds Diatta, who has been in Almería for 18 months and is confident that in another six months she can begin to process her documentation.
“Then I can find a good job,” she says hopefully.
Prefabricated modules of the temporary camp installed by the Nijar City Council in the neighborhood of Los Grillos, after the eviction of the Walili camp.Santi Donaire
With no alternative to sleep, Diatta will stay at the emergency center.
Before residing in Walili, she paid 120 euros a month for a room that she shared with two other people in San Isidro, a town in the large municipality of Níjar.
Others report that in the whole region they only offer garages to live badly together with many other people.
"Nobody rents us apartments," insists Samir, a 25-year-old Moroccan who is offered a deal: if he pays 5,000 euros to a businessman, they make him a contract in exchange.
With no chance to save for that purchase, he also knows nothing about her near future.
If before she used to pedal about 40 minutes a day on her bicycle to go to work, the distance from the emergency center has multiplied.
"I'll have to look for something closer, it's impossible to go from here," he says.
"Thats the big problem.
From the new center they cannot go to the greenhouses and the businessmen have told them that they are not going to pick them up," explains Carmen Domínguez, president of Médicos del Mundo in Andalusia, the entity in charge of managing the space together with Cepaim, the Red Cross, Almería Welcome and Mercedarian Sisters.
Domínguez believes that the eviction could have been carried out with more organization and later, when the intensive farming season had ended.
Now the migrants will be able to spend a period of two months in the emergency center.
Nobody knows what will happen next.
"Most likely they will end up on the street," adds a source from the Right to a Roof platform, where they believe that the dismantling of Walili has been nothing more than "a setup to win votes in the next municipal elections."
Samir, born in Morocco, has been one of the few people who have gone to the emergency service set up by the Nijar City Council after the eviction of the El Walili camp.Santi Donaire
"They have removed the settlement that bothers businessmen and tourists the most because it can be seen from the road," says Fernando Plaza, spokesman for the Andalusian Association for Human Rights (APDHA), which is requesting a meeting between all the administrations, employers, and social entities. to address a housing plan for migrant farmworkers.
"It is the only dignified solution," concludes Plaza.
At the moment, the Níjar City Council has promoted the construction of just 62 homes and only thanks to the financing of the Junta de Andalucía.
Still under construction, they will accommodate 120 people from next spring if the work ends within the agreed deadlines.
Another 3,000 people will continue, meanwhile, living poorly in more than fifty shanty towns throughout the region.
Invisible cities next to the tourist paradise.
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