The Documentary Podcast Folgen

How Catalonia’s housing crisis spawns opportunities for organised crime… Spain has a history of squatting. After the property crash of 2008 many families were forced to occupy homes that did not belong to them because they could not pay their mortgages. Now a darker side to ‘okupacion’ has emerged. Organised crime has seen an opportunity. Some flats in Barcelona have become ‘narcopisos’ - properties used to process or sell drugs. Other empty properties have been ‘sub-let’ by gangs to families who cannot afford a commercial rent. And the pandemic has spawned a new commercial model – extortion. These are cases where squatters occupy a property and demand a ‘ransom’ from the owner of several thousand Euros before they will leave. Enter the controversial ‘desokupa’ companies – firms run by boxers and bouncers who will evict unwanted 'tenants.'Producer / Presenter: Linda Pressly Producer / Presenter in Spain: Esperanza Escribano Editor: Bridget Harney(Image: Jorge Fe, director of FueraOkupas – a company dedicated to evicting squatters and unwanted tenants. Credit: BBC/Esperanza Escribano)

"We are our history," said James Baldwin. But how history is remembered depends on what materials survive, and who deems those materials worthy of preserving. Maya Millett - a writer, editor and founder of Race Women, an archive project dedicated to honouring early Black American feminists - speaks to the archivists who are working to ensure the voices and stories of African-Americans are not forgotten. As racism and violence against African-Americans continues, collecting, cataloguing, and preserving the truth has never been so vital in preventing the distortion of history.

A basketball journalist in Spain recognises three of the players in the gold-medal-winning intellectual disability basketball team - and they are not disabled. He has even played on the same team as one of them. But when he publishes his story in a national basketball magazine, the team’s organisers show certificates supposedly proving the players’ disability status. The denials continue until another of the players - who turns out to have been a journalist - publishes his own article exposing the fraud.