“IT HAS NOW COME TO THIS”

The fol­low­ing is based on cur­rent and fac­tual in­for­ma­tion...

How would you fancy sleep­ing in a car or a van?

Rather than the now an­ti­quated 20th cen­tury idea of hav­ing your own bed in some­thing as out­dated as a house, for the price of two euros a day our new busi­ness in Barcelona will ful­fill this fan­tasy for you. And for only 60 euros a month on a prime real-es­tate pub­lic street!

Nat­u­rally, there are those in the city coun­cil who want to curb your right to get your shut-eye shut out of build­ings but they just don’t un­der­stand an ad­ven­tur­ous spirit. Don’t let them tell you what to do and where you can and can’t do it. You work hard every day and you de­serve what we call a “micro space” to match your macro dreams.

We are open­ing in a small, quiet and al­most-de­serted square in the Sant An­dreu dis­trict. In the same lo­ca­tion you can rub shoul­ders with cus­tomers of our bee­hive flats. On top of all that, for a mere 90 euros per month you can go in­side, hang out on a plas­tic chair for the en­tire day, have a shower, store food, use the com­pli­men­tary mi­crowave, or even wash your clothes. Now that’s what we call livin’, baby!

Yes, it’s true that those small-minded lefty bu­reau­crats in the coun­cil have as­sured every­body that our op­er­a­tion won’t ac­tu­ally be legal but in the mean­time you can make us your home. We’ve traded in the semi-legal shad­ows for years so we’re at home with that, even if you’re not!

OK, it’s not ex­actly what most peo­ple call home and it’s tem­po­rary but let’s not quib­ble about se­man­tics. You need a mat­tress and we can rent you one. That’s just free-mar­ket cap­i­tal­ism in op­er­a­tion and who should stand in the way of your good night’s sleep. So, wind up the win­dows, click the locks on the doors and snug­gle up for sweet dreams!

Oh, and an­other thing that you don’t need to con­cern your­self with. We admit that mu­nic­i­pal tow trucks have al­ready taken some of the sleeper ve­hi­cles away but this is just a minor in­con­ve­nience. In the un­likely event we are dis­crim­i­nated against again in this way, we’ll re­fund half of your fee and find you an­other ve­hi­cle to nod off in. You can’t say fairer than that, can you?

As for our pre­mium ac­com­mo­da­tion we even have a wait­ing list for oth­ers to live in homes that are no big­ger than three square me­tres. We ac­knowl­edge that at the mo­ment those are also pro­hib­ited in Barcelona but they’ve got them in Japan and “any­thing-goes Madrid” so why not here too?

I know you’ve heard sto­ries of paper thin walls and hear­ing other peo­ple’s alarms going off and being kept awake by neigh­bour’s snor­ing…but just relax. Hu­mans can get used to any­thing. Even­tu­ally.

The truth is as sim­ple. You just don’t have a right to human-sized ac­com­mo­da­tion any­more. So­ci­ety can’t de­liver this to every­one so some peo­ple need to learn that they aren’t lucky enough to be com­fort­able, se­cure or well-housed. A lie-down bed isn’t a right, it’s a priv­i­lege!