Juan

“When you are in the streets, you’re on the outside, you’re excluded from the world.”

Juan
Over 15 years living on the street

“It’s not unusual for homeless people to be on the streets for a long time. I’ve spent over 15 years there. When you’re on the street, day-to-day, you feel and you understand that society passes you by. It rejects you. There comes a moment when you also reject society. You see it as an enemy. You stay on the outside, excluded from the world. They are safely up on a riverbank and you’re stuck on the other side of the water. You dedicate yourself to surviving and you scrape out a living, trying to avoid getting a beating or getting robbed of your shoes or your phone. I’ve been attacked many times, but I’ve never reported it. I think it’s a waste of time. It’s true that there are also people who behave well. I spent over ten years in Poblenou. There were people who helped me, who gave me food, clothes… not everyone is bad, but a large majority is…

Until, one day, all of a sudden, you see that winter is on its way, that once again you’re going to be out in the cold and you wonder to yourself whether it’ll be like this forever. Last November I spoke with the pair of volunteers that came to visit me in the street every week, and I was able to get into a hostel. Now I’m living in a shared flat. Those volunteers came to Poblenou every week for years. They would offer me help, they tried to convince me, but I always said: ‘No thank you, I don’t want anything.’

I go to Poblenou everyday, I know lots of people there. I’ve got friends of all ages, some who live on the streets and others who don’t. I say to a lot of people: ‘Why don’t you go to Arrels? Maybe they’ll be able to help you like they helped me.’ Now I’ve been through that experience, I can be an example to others that in the end it is possible to make a change. But there are people who will get annoyed whatever you tell them; they’re convinced that nobody will help them. Sometimes they say really bad things to the volunteers. I admire the volunteers. They establish a personal relationship with you, without ever insisting, and, asking nothing in return, they lend a hand. Now, that pair of volunteers see me as a different person.”