In Santa Maria de l'Avall something has broken for some time now. Behind the pine trees, where before only crickets and quiet conversations were heard, today tense whispers resonate, arguments between those who can afford the levy and those who fear not surviving it, and the uneasy silence of elderly families, who still do not grasp the magnitude of what is coming their way.
Because what is truly important is not this disproportionate work, but how it will affect all households in general and, very especially, the most vulnerable neighbors, who could lose everything without even understanding why.
It all started with the sewerage project. They told us it was a necessary improvement, and we all trusted in good faith. But what should have been just a reasonable improvement on paper has become, on the ground, a pharaonic work of more than 13 million euros. And that is just the first layer. Then comes what each family is obliged to do inside their plot: breaking gardens, drilling walls, redoing downpipes, installing pumps... In total, more than 40,000 euros per neighbor.
For a privileged few, it is just money; for the majority, it is the risk of economic ruin that can end in debts, defaults, or even the loss of their home.
The hardest part of all this is that the majority did not even vote. And the voting record that made it possible does not stand up to much scrutiny either. Seventy-seven hands decided for more than three hundred families. Many neighbors did not even know that vote existed because no one announced it with due notice. And yet, the decision was imposed as if it represented everyone.
The famous “savings quotas,” which now sound like something innocent, disguised as routine procedure, are actually the first warning that the countdown has begun: a covert obligation to start paying for an imposed project without the necessary majority. Even so, the administrative machinery keeps moving forward as if the consensus were solid and the decision unquestionable.
But what really scares is this:
In case of non-payment, surcharges, embargoes, and even expropriations can come. Yes, you read that right. If you cannot pay, you could lose your home. It is what the Board's own official statement says.
Meanwhile, the neighborhood streets remain potholed, without safe sidewalks and without sufficient lighting. They have been like this for years. The City Council has not been in a hurry for that... but it is in a hurry for us to finance, among all of us, a multimillion-euro project that the majority neither understands nor can afford.
The neglect of the council has not only left cracks in the asphalt but also in coexistence. Its urban abandonment, accumulated over years, has brought with it illegal occupations, a sense of insecurity, and loss of property value in an area that, not so long ago, was described as “a beautiful, quiet, and family-friendly corner.”
But most disturbing is not the abandonment, but the lack of guardianship in a project that called for a mediator, not a spectator. The City Council has not only renounced that role but has left the neighbors at the mercy of a Board with which it seems to walk in tune from the beginning, as if the result had been decided before listening to us.
And then comes the question no one wants to ask, but we all think: How have we allowed a minority to decide something so big for everyone?
This is not about politics. It is not about sides. It is about something much simpler: that the families of Santa Maria de l'Avall —retirees, workers, fathers, mothers— can continue living in their home without fear of losing it due to an impossible levy.
That is why it is so important to get informed, participate, make our voice heard. We are not against improving the neighborhood. We are against doing it without consensus, without transparency, and at the cost of many not being able to continue living here.
On the neighborhood website —santamariadelavall.com— a phrase summarizes everything we feel: “A fair project starts with the truth.”
And the truth is this:
We do not want to stop being neighbors.
We do not want anyone to be left out because they cannot pay.
We want clear decisions, legal votes, and real alternatives.
Because Santa Maria de l'Avall is not a construction site: it is our home.
And homes, like dignity, are not torn down with a trench.