The white curtains are still behind the glass. The coffee cups from breakfast have been left in the sink. The tablecloth on the table and the sheets on top. “16 years ago, they kicked us out of our homes. “They told us it was temporary, that after three months we could come back.” María del Carmen López remembers that winter of 2008 very well. The phone rang while she was working and someone called her urgently to her home, at the entrance of number 9 Alta Street in Santander. When she arrived, the mayor, the police and the firefighters were there. They had 15 minutes to collect their belongings. “Listen, a quarter of an hour to put our whole life in a suitcase. I went from one room to another very nervous without really knowing what to take with me,” she sighs.
The building is still standing nearly two decades later, but the lives of its 13 neighbors suddenly collapsed. They locked it and left behind furniture, appliances, wedding and first communion photographs hanging on the walls, dishes and personal belongings that they were never able to recover. They had just renovated the building, located in the ruined historic center of Santander, with spectacular views of the bay. They did not understand this surprising and sudden eviction. “Since then, they have been deceiving us,” says helplessly María Gómez, another affected neighbor.
Following the collapse of a house that killed three people in December 2007, the city council inspected the condition of 65 buildings in the Cabildo de Arriba, a dilapidated neighborhood of old buildings. Number 9 on Calle Alta was at risk level 2 along with 39 other properties: it did not present “stability problems,” according to the official report. But it was still evicted, and it is the only one that was sealed with this qualification. The others, four others, had level 1: structural risks that affected their stability, but not all were evicted and ended up succumbing to the picket. Number 25 on Calle Alta, in the worst condition of risk 1, has been completely rehabilitated over the years and only the staircase remains to be renovated.
That is to say, number 9 was not in imminent danger of collapse according to the assessment of municipal technicians, but the City Council considered that it could be affected by the deterioration of number 11, an empty building located on the southern slope above the Pasaje de Peña and overlooking the Plaza de las Estaciones which was accessed by a passage. Thus, the mayor at the time, Ínigo de la Serna (PP), ordered the “express” eviction of 9 and 13. But, a year later, when this problematic house was demolished, it was not allowed to return to its owners either. The supposed temporary prevention maneuver was delayed and ended up becoming permanent, ruining the building and the lives of its owners. It still exists, but after 16 years of uninhabitability and closure, its demolition will take place in the coming months.
The beginning of the end
Behind this death sentence with a pickaxe lies the biography of those who lived there and the disappointment, tears, economic ruin and helplessness of the neighbors who feel cheated and consider themselves victims. “We didn’t have money to pay lawyers and they destroyed our lives,” sighs María del Carmen López. “They evicted us from our homes in a brutal way, and our houses didn’t collapse, they were repaired,” adds Áureo Gutiérrez, another of the affected owners who had to leave his apartment at that time.
They brutally evicted us from our homes, and our homes were not collapsing, they were being repaired.
“This tragedy happened, the city council must have been afraid and evicted us, even though our apartments were in good condition,” is the only explanation that María Gómez, owner of the third floor, can find. She and her husband Áureo bought the apartment in 1990 for six and a half million pesetas at the time, although they later spent much more money to renovate the 110-square-meter house overlooking the bay. 32 years later, they took the 30,000 euros that Inmobiliaria Güemes offered them to get rid of their problems.
Shortly after the aforementioned eviction, a fire in the adjacent building of the former Palacio del Mueble – ironically, today the headquarters of the Cantabrian Housing Department – seriously damaged the property. “We no longer lived there and they wouldn’t let us in either, so we only discovered three months later the damage caused by the water that the firefighters used to put out the fire,” says María. “The light walls of my house were green, the ceilings of all the kitchens had collapsed… that’s when everything was ruined,” he says.
All these years since then have been a time of great suffering for these neighbours who were far from what used to be their home. “People broke into our houses and did nothing. My husband and I saw the windows of my house from the train stations. I had left the blinds closed and now they were open,” he recalls. “And we were there, watching how others lived in our apartment while they wouldn’t let us in,” he says with regret.
Four months ago, Maruja Gómez, the owner of the first, had finished paying the mortgage on her apartment, where she lived with her husband and one of her four children. “With what it cost me, with the effort we made to pay!” she remembers today, at almost 80 years old, from the 58 square meter apartment in El Alisal where she was relocated.
“They told us it was a short time and they deceived us: first they told us we would return and then they would give us an apartment,” he recalls. “My husband said: ‘I was born on Alta Street but, to die, I don’t die here’, and that’s how he left me alone a few years ago.” Other owners have also already died. They have all remained in contact with each other because they went to live in neighboring apartments where, in this adversity, they have maintained the ties of another small community.
Every time there were elections, they came to say that they were going to help us and that they had already sent money from Europe to our homes.
On the fifth floor, with an area of 116 square metres, lived María del Carmen López. “I shed a lot of tears. It destroyed my life. “I can’t go down Calle Alta because I start crying,” laments this single mother with three children who, like other owners of number 9, was relocated to another 50-square-metre apartment in the El Alisal neighbourhood, on the outskirts of Santander, where she continues to live 16 years later. Living in this long temporary home, paying rent. “With everything I had to sacrifice to pay for the apartment!” she sighs.
“It changed my life radically and no one cared about us,” he confesses. “They told us they were going to give us a new apartment for little money, they carried out several renovation projects that I saved up.” Months and years went by without a solution. “Every time there were elections, they came to say that they were going to help us and that they had already sent the money from Europe to our homes,” he recalls. At another point, they were presented with a budget for a supposed rehabilitation that cost more than the demolition of the building. In the meantime, they continued to pay almost 400 euros of IBI “without being able to live in the house.” “In the end, I had to sell it to the City Hall for three ‘female dogs’. They gave me 39,000 euros,” he concludes.
His former neighbour, María Gómez, is clear: “I only ask that they now rehouse my neighbours in the social flats that they are going to build in our old houses. Why involve other people?” “They have more rights,” he argues, after the latest project of the Local and Regional Administration was made public, which foresees the conversion of the properties into land and then rebuilding a block of social housing.
Concerns in the neighborhood
It has only been a few weeks since the mayor of Santander, Gema Igual (PP), and the Minister of Housing of the Government of Cantabria, Roberto Media (PP), announced the demolition of this building and number 13 to build social housing. For them, it was good news. For its former owners, a defeat. The municipal projects arouse suspicion in a neighborhood that distrusts political managers and developers after decades of abandonment and broken promises of regeneration. Neighbors in the neighborhood speak of “sabotage, intimidation, pressure, suspicions of malicious arson and disruptive individuals” who broke into the apartments in an attempt to evict residents.
Sixteen years later, after much heartbreak, the two buildings will disappear in the coming months. They now belong to the Santander City Council, which for two years has been buying properties in the area from individual owners and private developers who had acquired properties in the hope of doing business. The City Council has spent at least half a million euros to buy all the uninhabited apartments and premises at portals 9 and 13 in order to force their demolition. With Inmobiliaria Güemes, owner of several apartments at numbers 9, 11 and 13, it has signed a purchase and sale agreement to acquire them in batches and which will be formalized in the coming weeks. The demolition of the building will cost the City Council almost 300,000 euros more. In total, almost 800,000 euros of public money will be invested in the operation.
I only ask that they now rehouse my neighbours in the social apartments that they are going to build in our old houses. Why involve other people? They have more rights.
A few days ago, the phone of the owner of a small apartment rang in the neighborhood, very close to where the new building is planned to be built. Someone who did not even identify himself offered him 20,000 euros for it. “They are pushing us to sell for two dollars, to demolish our houses and to do business on our own,” laments a neighbor who, in recent years, has invested a lot of money of his own pocket to repair his building. Today, they are repairing the roof, although he is cautious: “We do not know if one day they will want to demolish our house too, because they do not speak clearly,” he explains.
All buildings have a history that is the sum of the biographies of those who inhabit them. The misfortunes of number 9 High Street are not unique. A little further up, on this same sidewalk, the residents of number 15 fear for their future. Only a few meters separate them. Although their building is repaired and has passed the technical inspection, the owners are worried. The neighborhood is used to living in uncertainty, but this does not spare suffering or worry. “I still live here, but I have seen a lot of pain and a lot of tears that no one has cared about and they always ask us to trust. Who?” laments Pilar García, aware that history always repeats itself.
