“If they evict us, I don’t know what we’re gonna do. Now we have nothing”, says Trini, who lives with his partner and son in one of the eight squatted houses in a building at the center of Madrid. The 500 euros she earns taking care of elders is the only income of her family. As with most of the families that had been forced to squatting, Trini and her family want to pay for their house, but at a fair price. “I have a son and I want him to learn that he have to work hard to gain things”, explains Trini.
Since 2007 there were more than 350,000 evictions for unpaid mortgages, according to the Spanish Association of People Affected for Embargoes and Auctions. Many of these evictions have left entire families with children without homes and, have even been the cause of several suicides, like the case of M.P., who hanged himself in the street on November, 2011, in Catalonia, after being evicted with his wife and two children.
The situation of housing in Spain is especially paradoxical. While hundreds of thousands families have lost their homes, in 2001 there were more than three million empty houses and today there could be six millions. Meanwhile,the financial entities had became the mayor real states of the country. Bankia alone owns more than 5 million euros in properties. [Read More]
