The coronavirus crisis has caused an image that until now had not been seen at number 51 of Avenida Escaleritas, in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. At least not for so many weeks. At breakfast and lunch time, a queue of up to 150 people forms at the Caritas Diocesana headquarters in search of food. The number of applicants, usually homeless or living in slums without a kitchen, has barely changed during the state of alarm but are now more visible. Security measures prevent these days from going to the soup kitchen and they must wait in the street to pick up a bag of food. First thing in the morning they receive a sandwich, with juice and fruit; and at noon two hot dishes. “I come to eat properly, otherwise I could only buy cookies and things like that,” explains José Luis, an 80-year-old retiree who assures us that he lives alone because he has no family.
He is first in line waiting, from 10:00 am, to get his lunch bag. He is not alone, he is accompanied by Patxi, a cook who was unemployed the week before the quarantine was declared. “I did not enter the ERTE by the hair. I ran out of income and had to come to Caritas to eat. The first time I got in line it was hard, I never imagined having to ask for help,” this excited Basque tells us who has been living in Gran Canaria for decades. He admits that he sometimes feels ashamed because the Caritas headquarters is located on a busy street “and many people see us standing here.” They are part of the most visible poverty but they are not the only ones. Before the pandemic, Cáritas responded to some 8,000 requests for help in the Canary Islands. Now, since mid-March, they have supported some 14,000 people.
300 daily menus are prepared in the dining room on Avenida Escaleritas. Half for those who queue in the street, about 60 travel to the south of Gran Canaria and the rest are distributed by Civil Protection in homes where elderly people live alone, with disabilities and also for families. Those who do not receive these dishes, get cards with money to spend in supermarkets. They have not yet been able to prepare a study, only to quantify the cases, but, with the coronavirus, Caritas has received new profiles who had never before had to ask for help to eat at an NGO.
But Caritas, in addition to an increase in requests for food, has also registered more requests for information, guidance and coverage of basic aid. Only in Tenerife 303 agents are directly involved (226 volunteers and 67 priests) as well as the technical team of the Department of Animation to the Territory, which is made up of 15 professionals. For the development of their work, and following the sanitary protocols, apart from providing the basic means of protection, such as masks, gloves and disinfectant gels; They have been given the appropriate guidelines to carefully observe the safety and social distancing measures recommended by the authorities.
NGOs such as Cáritas strive to help people who do not meet the requirements to be cared for by public administrations, such as migrants without a residence permit or women in prostitution. In Gran Canaria, within the Lugo project, these days they help 278 prostituted women who have been left without income or rights to a benefit.
Own funds
These demands of the families are being able to respond with the entity’s own funds, through the delivery of vouchers / shopping cards in the supermarket or delivery of non-perishable food packs and to a lesser extent it is also being able to cover the support for the purchase of medicines through pharmacy vouchers and the purchase of butane gas. The increase in unemployment and the limitations imposed by the state of alarm on the productive sectors of the archipelago leads Caritas to think that in the coming months the requests for help will continue to grow.
Only in the province of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Cáritas Diocesana de Tenerife has evidence that there are around half a thousand people living in slums, settlements, ravines, ravines, abandoned houses or caves. With the help of some parish communities, priests and volunteers, hygiene kits, food, blankets and sleeping bags, as well as clean water are being delivered.
Cáritas advocates establishing the guaranteed minimum income, with equivalent coverage throughout the territory of the State and that is capable of reaching families that, as a result of this crisis, are incorporated into poverty and social exclusion, and who face to the added risk that their situation will worsen and become chronic in the immediate future.
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