The next day 28, at nine in the morning, is the new date set by Court Number 1 of Granadilla de Abona for the release of Paola and her 12 year old son of the house they have rented for eight years in the Las Acacias building, in San Isidro. In it, yesterday a group of neighbors gathered inside and outside the apartment, which they supported, to prevent the eviction decreed by the magistrate from coming to fruition, after the complaint of the new owner, who acquired the property for 20,000 euros.
Paola Parrales, who has been paying 225 euros for rent for eight years -she only has a salary from a part-time job-, consigned to a Granadilla Court, has managed to have her launch postponed again, as already happened in July and September from last year. Not even the eviction procedure comes in her name, but that of Manuel, her ex-father-in-law, when he never lived in the apartment in question.
But yesterday, the director of the Civil Guard Post in Granadilla, after announcing the postponement of the execution of the launch, made it clear: “The person who lives there is independent, it is about recovering the property, that he be clear, the April 28 must be unoccupied.”
The launch was scheduled to take place yesterday at eleven in the morning and from early in the morning a large group of neighbors gathered around Paola’s apartment. A dozen of them remained inside it, where they propped up the door, and many others outside, waiting for the judicial procession.
An official, accompanied by two Civil Guard agents, as well as the new owner and his solicitor, knocked on the door without receiving an answer from Paola, who refused to open, while Joana, representative of the Arguayoda-Las Acacias Neighborhood Association , insisted that “the launch was not against Paola and that she had not had a trial to defend herself.”
Shortly after, the entourage left the landing of the house and moved outside the building. They did not leave, they were just waiting for the judge to order the entrance to the house by force. Everything suggested that this was going to happen when up to six more Civil Guard patrols moved in, with shields and hammers to intervene. However, the chief of the agents went up to the second floor, this time to announce that the launch was being suspended. It was then that Paola was able to open the door and hug each of the neighbors who had accompanied her inside and outside her home, where her mother, who had come from the Balearic Islands, and her little 12-year-old son, who yesterday was not to the Institute.
With tears in her eyes, Paola insisted: “I just want the judge to listen to me, I’m not a squat, I want a trial and defend myself, I have nowhere to go.” And it is that not even with the documentation delivered by Paola, the Court has annulled the launch order, initiated in its day against Manuel, the father of her ex-partner. Not even Platform for the Right to Decent Housing Montaña Clara Not even the Canarian Housing Institute have been able to stop the announcement of the traumatic eviction, now postponed for 20 days.
An all too repeated story in Granadilla
There is no official figure, but the Granadilla City Council has reported that in the municipality, and, above all, in San Isidro, it is estimated that a thousand squatters reside. Only in the latter there are a dozen buildings that were left unbuilt in the 2008 crisis that are squatted, some of them in the hands of alleged Russian or Italian owners who resell the flats, even with tenants inside, as is the case in the Las Acacias building. , where many of the residents have spent years paying the rent to an account of the Court before the bankruptcy of the companies that own subsidized housing that theoretically cannot be sold on the free market until the year 2043. But in reality what is deduced All of this is due to the lack of social housing in a municipality that grows by 1,000 inhabitants every year, a constant that is repeated in almost the entire south of the island, together with the pomposity of tourist facilities.
