Girona is the Spanish province with the highest rate of evictions. In one of its towns, Salt, a group of 40 teachers organized themselves to make their voices heard and demand solutions to a drama they experience daily.
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Catalonia is the community in which the greatest number of evictions take place. In the second quarter of this year there were 3,961, almost double that of Andalusia, the second autonomy in this ranking of shame. Also as a percentage of the population, Catalonia is the one that accumulates the most. One in four made in Spain. 75% are for rental and are very similar figures to the first half of last year. Only in the calculation per 100,000 inhabitants does Murcia surpass it.
Girona is the Spanish province with the highest rate of evictions. In one of its cities, Salt, a group of 40 teachers organized themselves into a group “Prou desnonaments: teachers for dignified housing” to raise their voices and demand solutions to a tragedy that they experience daily because those expelled are often its students, children and adolescents from families who live in more than precarious situations. Many are victims of real estate racism and some find themselves directly on the street. Other times, the alternatives offered to them are far from schools and this means that if before the course was already complicated for these creatures, after the expulsion it becomes an odyssey.
A representative of the student family associations, Ikram Jamal, participated in the event in front of the Salt town hall and described the situation they are facing: “We find ourselves in situations of uncertainty in case they expel us from the house. We cannot find rentals due to the strong weight of real estate racism despite financial means. There are no protection mechanisms when we are single-parent families. We are not offered solutions. We are simply abandoned in the streets. From this perspective, it is logical for teachers to wonder how much longer the right to private property will prevail over the rights of children and adolescents.
The evolution of evictions is one of those data that describes us as a society, but which has gone unnoticed between the headlines on the vandalization of Gerard Piqué’s residence, the debate on the advisability of placing a giant star in Plaça Sant Jaume or a crèche or Salvador Illa’s mistake in attending a fair that promoted sherry oil while on the same weekend, Catalan producers were selling theirs at two other events, in Reus and Courriers.
The figures from the General Council of the Judicial Power, the organization which presents every six months the evolution of launches for both mortgages and rentals, did not attract the attention of the numerous debate tables which occupy the radio stations from early morning until ‘at midnight. And it won’t, because we don’t have time. We will therefore take advantage of this privileged speaker to emphasize this. Because regarding the debates that took place in Congress based on the billions of dollars of profits of energy companies or the sudokus of the European Parliament to distribute the positions of the new Commission, I now consider you informed.
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93 organizations from 22 countries around the world gathered a few days ago in Barcelona to participate in the first International Popular Housing Assembly. It confirms that we are facing a “structural” crisis because housing has become a “profitable asset for financial players”. During the meeting, they advocated the search for legal mechanisms and the promotion of institutional and street pressure actions. There is no alternative either, as shown in the film “On the Margins”, directed by Juan Diego Botto and written by our colleague Olga Rodríguez.
Much time has been lost, even though Catalonia has been a pioneer in promoting housing legislation. But with the real estate sector standing in the way and the Constitutional Court overturning laws for violation of powers. Six regulations and a dozen decrees have been approved over the last 15 years and yet this is the main problem we are currently facing. For example, according to calculations by the Barcelona Tenants Union, over the last 15 years, half of the apartments purchased were by investors who already own eight or more apartments.
A demonstration is called this Saturday in the Catalan capital with the motto “S’ha finis!” in reference to the patience of the tenants. In reality, those who are owners but not speculators should also be there, because the difficulties in accessing decent housing are one of the factors that contribute most to inequalities, segregation and problems of coexistence.
