They have spent years demanding a solution that has not just arrived. When they started doing it, they still felt strong enough to face the endless stairs they use to enter and leave their houses, even to go up and down a ramp, the only one they have, despite its steep incline.
Now, a few years later, all over 60 years old, these fifty residents, who have their homes in the neighborhood of La Salud, between Güímar and Cornisa streets, face a “prison” that is their own households. “We are kidnapped in our own homes. My mother-in-law, 85 years old, only goes out thanks to the fact that between my wife and I we carry her on wings to the car. The speaker is Sergio García, who has been living in the area for almost 50 years and is 75 years old.
Miguel Hernández is another one of those neighbors who lives trapped in his own house and, in his case, with the addition that he moves in a wheelchair. “I’ve been living here for 50 years and at 78 I can’t even use the ramp without help.” “With scrambled eggs and cement everything is fixed,” adds this neighbor. Added to her complaint is María, who at 66 has already fallen three times on the ramp and her knees no longer allow her to move with agility up the entrance and exit stairs. “When I fell at home, they took me out and entered the fight, because until I got to the ramp it was all stairs,” she says.
While the neighbors are recounting their day to day, only four steps up is Emilia, leaning on a cane. Although she would like to join the rest of her, at 81 years old she does not dare to go downstairs. She says that she only leaves the house when her daughters come to look for her.
Carmen Luz is 65 years old and speaks for her husband, Gilberto, who recently underwent surgery and is at home unable to leave. “We are condemned to be here,” she laments.
They have all gathered at a landing of the stairs, just where the ramp ends, at the request of We want to move, the group that fights for the rights of people with disabilities, to which the neighbors have demanded their help. Ana Mengíbar is its president and she tells DIARIO DE AVISOS that “they called us a few weeks ago. We came to pay a visit and we verified that they live in a prison”. Mengíbar claims that, “regardless of who the management corresponds to, it is something that must be done immediately. They have been complaining for years, they come, they measure, they make promises and nothing is fulfilled”. “We are going to start asking for appointments and going wherever necessary because older people cannot be condemned to live without being able to leave their homes,” Mengíbar concludes.
From the City Hall of Santa Cruz, the Councilor for Accessibility, Javier Rivero, admits that he is well aware of the problem suffered by these neighbors. “Since we arrived in 2020, we have been working to clarify who owns the land over which the new ramp would have to run, because the main problem is that the land is not municipal. Therefore, we cannot act”, he explains. Even so, he points out that, “at least, we already have all the documentation of who owns those gardens, where the ramp runs, which should never have been done in those conditions,” he admits.
The land belongs to the community of residents of the building that stands next to the land dwellings of those affected.
“Once we have all the documentation, we will study the options, with a ramp that goes from street to street, not just the section that has been built, and with the appropriate incline.”
According to the mayor, these solutions go through an expropriation of the land from the community, a transfer, or by looking for a formula that allows acting on municipal land. In any case, “I cannot promise a date, what we are going to have in this mandate is a preliminary project that tells us what the best solution is.”
