US EditionThe homeless people of Madrid’s Barajas airport: ‘I’m sick of sleeping on the floor’
- Hundreds of homeless people, estimated between 370 and 500, currently sleep rough each night at Madrid’s Barajas Airport in late 2024.
- This increase reflects a broader rise in Spain’s homeless population, which grew about 24.5 percent from 2012 to 2022, driven by limited social housing and inadequate public social spending.
- Interviewed residents include both Spaniards and foreigners, many facing health issues, unemployment, or lack of shelter access, with some like Paulina forced to sleep on cardboard at the airport.
- In 2023, Caritas, a Spanish nonprofit, supported over 42,000 individuals experiencing homelessness, marking a 7.2 percent rise from the prior year, while officials dispute accountability by pointing to the influx of asylum seekers and the country's limited capacity to accommodate them.
- The Barajas homelessness highlights Spain’s growing social exclusion risk amid housing instability, suggesting urgent need for improved shelter resources and coordinated government action.
17 Articles
17 Articles
Almeida says the solution to the Barajas homeless must be coordinated and the government insists that it "takes its responsibility"
The mayor of Madrid, José Luis Martínez-Almeida, said in the Pradera de San Isidro in the framework of the great party of the capital that the solution to the sintecho who spend the night at the airport Adolfo Suárez Madrid-Barajas must be coordinated with Aena and that the City Council "will always be in the solution". On the "judicial demand" of the public company so that it is the Consistory that acts as competent administrator, Almeida has s…
Migration returns the ball to the Madrid PP, points to Almeida and denies having received asylum applications by Barajas
The Ministry, in response to recent declarations from the City Council and the regional government, defends its action against what Almeida has called a “serious humanitarian situation”. It reproaches the mayor for the overnight stay at the airport of some 300 homeless people, over whom he has competence.
The homeless erased from Barajas: «We are not invisible, here on the T4 there are asylum seekers»
At the age of 26, Ale, as her fatigue companions call her, spends the dead hours at the bottom of a corridor of the T4 of Barajas, where she arrived five days ago guided by a volunteer of Caritas. Her story, calm but sharp, is only altered by the presence of a couple of television cameras, faithful pilgrimage of a subject that is on the way, at least mediaally, to becoming a kind of “walking circus”. “We don’t want to be recorded”, protests this…
The despair of the homeless sleeping at Barajas airport, stolen and forgotten: "I think every day to return to my country, there I would have a job"
What began being a large group of sintecho that spent night after night at level 1 of the T4 of the airport Adolfo Suárez Madrid-Barajas has ended with...
Barajas turned into a hostel?: hundreds of homeless people sleep at Madrid airport - La Tercera
Madrid airport is in a crisis, after its terminals became a sort of makeshift shelter for hundreds of homeless people who have spent three months in the area, sometimes reaching half a thousand. Meanwhile, the various authorities involved are discussing who has the responsibility to solve what is happening. “The current situation of homeless people at Barajas airport is tougher than ever,” he told the RTVE Gaspar García portal, responsible for t…
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