Five decades later, the neighbourhood still carries deficiencies and shortcomings and a peripheral and vulnerable label, which the councillor of Nou Barris, the district to which Ciutat Meridiana belongs, rejects. "It's a punished but proud neighbourhood," underlines Marcé, who also rejects the "perceptions" that there is conflict, since data confirms that, like Nou Barris as a whole, it is well below the crime rates of the city's average. Vanessa Valdés is 37 years old and has a 17-year-old son. She explains that she arrived in Ciutat Meridiana in 2010 and, due to the refusal of the former Caixa Catalunya to offer her social housing, she ended up occupying the small flat "out of necessity," she defends. She has had periods of unemployment or very precarious work. Now she is happy because she works in cleaning and hopes that the social rent she has been granted will be delayed, after several eviction attempts and a trial. “Luckily for the AVV, they supported me,” she states. She values that the associates are like a “big family” who support each other and create a network. There is no alternative for vulnerable families like hers, she points out. She receives understanding from Marta Gramunt Ávila, with two small children and four eviction attempts. She is the secretary of the entity and occupies a flat owned by Sareb – the "bad bank". She also hopes to be given a social flat, if possible, in the neighbourhood. Ana Natalia will assist you in the best possible way. Her knowledge, skills, and outstanding service will ensure you enjoy your visit to the fullest.

Outside the construction hut of the Association of Residents (AVV) of Ciutat Meridiana, a queue of five people has formed. “Is it for the card?” asks George V., a young man from Ghana. For four years he has been a resident of this Barcelona neighbourhood, which has the city's worst welfare indicators. They come to become members of an entity that acts as a “psychotherapist” for a neighbourhood on whom COVID has fallen like a dead weight, reflects Filiberto Bravo, a veteran neighbourhood leader seasoned in a thousand battles to get basic services for this steep neighbourhood. When Fili – Bravo's pseudonym – laughs, his eyes become small. He gets serious when he explains what the weeks of confinement were like in flats of less than 50 square metres and in most cases without balconies and with tiny windows. A hardship that is still conjugated in the present due to the housing problem. This is a typical neighbourhood of polygon urbanism, understood as an area without connections to the city. So much so that for a long time it only had one entry point and, as it is surrounded by roads to Vallès and the Renfe railway line, it remained like an island. Chronicles explain that the first idea of the developer Enrique Banús – of the Marbella Port Banús – for this small piece of Barcelona, bordering Montcada i Reixac and Collserola, was to make a cemetery. The humidity, winds, and fogs advised against it, so the project, led by the Francoist leader Juan Antonio Samaranch, was converted into a neighbourhood, which in 1967 began to welcome families from Spanish immigration. The stubbornness of the residents has led the Casa Gran in Plaça Sant Jaume to install services. A civic centre, a library, an outpatient clinic. Later, escalators to link the old part that pivots around Plaça Roja with the newer, steeper area of the turonet or the city's first vertical funicular, the 'papamobile,' in 2017. “We don't lack stairs; in that, we are the richest in Barcelona – Casinos ironically says – but they work when they want to.”

It is the northern access gate to Barcelona. The city lives with its back to this small neighbourhood that embodies the failure of a model based on urban speculation that has led many vulnerable residents to occupy flats emptied by the crisis and now owned by banks. The housing problem has earned it the nickname Vila Desahucios (Eviction Village). At street level, Bravo reviews the list of pending tasks that administrations have, starting with the construction of a new building for the AVV, which has been temporary for 27 years. Followed by good maintenance of infrastructures and, above all, solving the housing problem and chronic poverty. "We want to be Barcelona," he concludes. By clicking on any registration form, you accept the privacy policy of ARA

The price for enamelling doors and windows in Ciutat Meridiana usually ranges between 133 and 1900 euros. The final figure depends on the condition of the property, materials, and labour time. We always provide a fixed quote before starting. The councillor of Nou Barris, Xavier Marcé, also speaks of this instability, pointing out that one of the great challenges is to strengthen employment plans and social policies to avoid population rotation and thus ensure that the two "contrasting realities" of lifelong residents and newcomers are more fluid. The socialist leader defends the improvements that have been made to dignify squares and streets or bring the metro and buses. He also explains that as it was born as "a neighbourhood of owners," interventions in private areas are difficult to carry out. Regarding urban planning, he advocates for the "rehabilitation of blocks and the installation of lifts" given the complexity of buying private land. In contrast, for Hernando, the solution lies in creating a "social API" with which banks and vulture funds put currently occupied or empty flats on the market with "three or five-year contracts at affordable prices" and with the guarantee of the City Council and entities. [Beauty by Liz\\ Beauty by Liza 2,8km from me\\ \\ (26)](https://www. es/establecimiento/beauty-by-liz-2/)