The mayor of San Sebastián, Jon Insausti (PNV), informed representatives of Kaleko Afari Solidarioak KAS (Street Solidarity Dinners, in Basque) this Thursday that the decision made this past Tuesday to prohibit the distribution of food to homeless people is “irrevocable.” “There is no turning back,” Agus Rodríguez, spokesperson for KAS, told this newspaper after holding a meeting with the Donostiarra mayor.
The volunteers who go daily to three points in the city (Constitution Square, Anoeta, and Gipuzkoa Square) to give food to unprotected people, up to a total of approximately 300, have conveyed to the mayor the request to revoke the prohibition adopted at the beginning of this week. At least, to allow continuing to give food to these people until the city council sets up a social dining room where this group will be attended to, as announced this Tuesday. Insausti’s response to the three KAS representatives was negative.
There will be no more solidarity dinners from now on, the mayor told them, who expressed hope that during August his commitment to open an assistance resource for the people who usually attend the solidarity dinners will be fulfilled. “Meanwhile, there will be more than 200 people on the street who will not be able to eat a hot meal,” Rodríguez laments.
Insausti justified the prohibition for reasons of “healthiness” and stressed that the distribution of dinners was generating “coexistence problems” and “insecurity” in the places where this solidarity activity takes place. The three KAS representatives demanded that the mayor “not link migration with delinquency,” something that according to this group is an argument usually used by the right and far right.
In the meeting, which lasted almost two hours, the mayor was accompanied by the councilor for Social Services, María Jesús Idoate. The volunteers expressed their discomfort with the “disparaging treatment” that, according to these people, the mayor is showing to the group of volunteers who serve food without asking for anything in return. This group organized a rally and a demonstration this Wednesday in protest against the end of the solidarity dinners, which was joined by more than a thousand people.