IN THE

WORDS

Of the

locals

This is already a ghetto ...

For people from the outside, this is a ghetto.

Just imagine if there was a mosque here.

(Roser - 50 year old citizen)

And the type of immigration that has come, above all, from Arab countries ... 95% are male and 5% older folks, children, and women. But all the rest are men and what do you want

me to say? When I see my girlfriend or mother pass by with 25

men in the street who look at them from bottom to top, it’s

a little discomforting, first of all for them and second for me.

(Xavier - 33 year old citizen)

You’ve seen how deteriorated the neighborhood is. It lacks trees, it lacks benches, there is trash everywhere, there are

rats bigger than this table, they don’t clean the trash bins.

They want this to be a ghetto ... Why don’t they bring all this

to the center - these (immigrant) shops ... Why don’t they

place them there, in the center of Badalona? They say they belong here. [There] they don’t give them permits, but

here they do. Here they don’t check the permits or anything.

So what happens - do they think we’re stupid or what? We

pay taxes just as they do! Everyone pays, everyone pays!

(Jose Maria - campaign leader against mosque establishment)

Those of us who have lived all our lives in Artigas do not

feel as though we are from Badalona ... We say, “I’m

going to Badalona to the movies.” We put “Badalona” beforehand because the feeling is that we aren’t from Badalona ... And I believe that this feeling exists because,

in Badalona, until 1990 we didn’t exist. We existed to pay taxes, but we didn’t exist - we didn’t feel like citizens.

The police didn’t come here, the streets weren’t repaired.

If the lights went out, you might go a week with the lights

off. There was a lot, and I mean a lot of abandonment.

(Angel - former neighborhood association president)