“We have become fighters by force,” says Asunción Carbonell, the Asun, a veteran housing rights activist, aged 68, whose last 13 have been trying to maintain a decent apartment. The woman arrives at the meeting in the Usera neighborhood with her niece at 10 a.m., two hours before the start of today’s demonstration, Sunday, to wait for her colleagues from the Orcasur neighborhood, south of Madrid, and arrive on time to Atocha. hours The logistics of a walk force you to calculate what your body can handle, with nearly seven decades behind you and more than a decade of vital instability.
Asun has already passed the retirement age of those living in the formal economy, but other younger colleagues show a higher age on their faces than what appears on their ID cards. “The bodies can’t stand it, people age in a way that is not natural,” explains Laura Barrio, 49, one of the founders of the Usera Housing Assembly, who explains that in each eviction there is there is the seed of a chronic illness, of a downward spiral of lack of protection. “We move from ownership to formal rental, then to informal, to verbal contract and money in hand. […] And we continue without implementing measures that stabilize people,” he criticizes.
Asun and a dozen companions decide to board the bus going to Atocha and avoid the metro journey, because the journey will then be long and fatigue awaits them. On the bus, she talks about her grandchildren, who take her phone to play and leave her incommunicado, whereas before they had many more children. There were other times when he also had to live in a cabin – he stayed there for eight years – before having access to an apartment. The mortgage crisis hit her in the streets, today she is fighting not to be evicted from the house she occupies out of necessity, an empty apartment that is now a business opportunity. “First it was from the bank, now from Cerberus.” It takes 10 attempts at eviction and multiple attempts to obtain social security which does not arrive. “They overwhelm me, they harass me, but I’m not leaving,” he insists.
The physical toll of despair
In Usera, old battle comrades meet the youngest members of the Tenants’ Union. Everyone meets in Atocha an hour before the start of the event. Also arriving is Rosario Reyes, 59, who has regained her hair – not her teeth – which she lost in the worst times of the last decade, when her house in San Martín de la Vega was sold at auction for non- payment. She finished off the Orcasur militants after knocking on every door she could find in desperation. Today, he is fighting to regain ownership of his house. “We are re-emerging, and even if I can’t do it, I have found life again […] “It was very hard, my children experienced poverty,” he remembers.
Rosario tackles the real estate elephant. “It’s not our fault; These are mismanagement, speculation, real estate; and the government has fueled this, it does not impose any limits on them,” he laments, but he contests: “Let’s put an end to this.” Upon his arrival in Atocha, he stayed for a few moments behind the group’s banner which read “Usera: neighborhoods for living, not for speculating.” But after a while he moves away from the group, carrying a cloth with insignia on his chest to sell to those who want to collaborate. They carry feminist and protest messages against evictions.
Losing your house, gateway to “civil death”
The danger is that of “civil death,” insists Barrio, who warns that losing one’s apartment is a slope that cannot be smoothed “by going to a worse house or by not getting out of trouble.” “How do I get out of there? Money is not enough; you need social references, endorsements, money in the account, professional seniority… And we have naturalized it,” he criticizes. But in Atocha, everyone agrees that this cannot be the case, including a 61-year-old woman who we will call Raquel, because she came despite her sick leave, because being present today Today is an obligation. “My jelly is shaking,” he says of his spine. To come, she had to leave her daughter, now older but suffering from a serious intellectual disability, in the care of a neighbor. “I had to come,” he said. He almost apologizes for not being able to express himself well. “Just like you, I would like to learn to speak, Rosario,” she congratulates her companion.
The walk starts slowly, in Atocha there is a traffic jam and it is time to see the signs. The ironic messages are numerous. “Give me another idea, it’s ready,” they say, referring to the real estate portal Idealista. There are puns that take advantage of English, like “alkiller” (rent kills, that means). Or even posters and t-shirts bearing the image of James Dean, a rebel no longer “without a cause”, but “without a home”. There are those from Orcasur, in the middle of a peloton that advances slowly, ignoring the stops and cuts that occur due to differences between certain organizing organizations.
The one we don’t see anywhere is Asun. Only after several rounds is it possible to locate her practically in the lead, with her personal banner, with a jacket that commands the “war” against the real estate fund. He has already been walking for two hours, when asked if his legs can support him, he looks them in the eye and replies: “They have to hold up”.
