“The authorities force 50 people to leave the 41 occupied homes of ‘El Barco’ (2017). “The Civil Guard breaks down the door and evicts 17 people in San Isidro” (2018). “They carry out an eviction despite the fact that the affected party paid off the debt and is in a coma” (2021). “Paola entrenches herself before the eviction of the apartment she rented eight years ago in the Las Acacias building.” And “The Desokupa company leaves a hundred people in San Isidro without water and electricity” (2022).
These are some of the headlines left us by the dramatic housing situation in San Isidro, the most populous neighborhood in Granadilla de Abona, the municipality that has grown the most in number of inhabitants so far this century, in the last decade to an average of a thousand inhabitants per year. However, since 2011 not a single public housing has been built, despite the fact that the City Council has ceded land for this purpose (3,300 square meters in Cuevas de Cho Portada and Poncela), a power of the Government of the Canary Islands and specifically of Visocanwhose manager Víctor Nicolás González, acknowledged a few days ago that “unlike what happens with health and education, housing has never been a priority for governments.”
Although the Constitution states that all Spaniards have the right to housing, it is still a toast to the sun. Without going any further, without counting those thousands of young people who cannot be emancipated because they cannot spend 80 or 90% of their salary on rent, in the Canary Islands there are 18,000 registered housing applicants and the Government of the Canary Islands only allocates 17.5 million of euros for social rent. And although good intentions are not lacking – just look at that billboard, precisely in Granadilla, which includes ‘Canarias para vivir. Housing Plan 2020-2035” – the truth is that the deficit of social housing in the Canary Islands is alarming and access to renting private housing is unaffordable for almost half a million Canarians on the poverty line. Flats, moreover, that are put up for holiday rental in tourist towns and reduce the possibility of the market for our workers. “There is work, but there is nowhere to live”, recognize the employers who are looking for personnel.
no public housing
San Isidro is one of those examples of areas that have grown in the tourist outskirts as a “dormitory city”. Almost 30,000 people live there, coming from all over the world. The growth was such that construction did not stop between the 1990s and the beginning of the century, until the 2008 crisis came and many construction companies went bankrupt, leaving a dozen buildings unfinished, some made as VPO (Official Protection Housing). Despite this, these buildings ended up in the so-called bad bank (Sareb) and from there to Russian, Italian or Romanian owners, who already acquired them with tenants or ‘squatters’ inside. It is not surprising, therefore, that eviction orders and judicial releases follow one another, although in many cases, as in the Las Acacias building, fifty people have been paying their rent for almost ten years to a Court account, as This is the case of the young Paola and her 12-year-old son, whom they have tried to evict on four occasions and precisely on Friday she was able to testify before the judge, as she wished. And meanwhile, in the last week we have experienced a singular episode. Without a court order – the trials are scheduled for the 17th – four members of the Desokupa company, who came from Madrid, entered the Tabaiba building at dawn, apparently tore down three of the four entrance doors and closed the climb to the roof, after, according to the neighbors, cutting off the water network from the drums and the solar panels, placed by the occupants as they did not have electricity or running water.
It is estimated that in those ten buildings, almost all located in the La Jurada area, the most expansive in San Isidro, there are about 1,000 squatters, although the City Council does not know how to tell us exactly how many of them are seeking housing in Social Services .
The Councilor for Social Services, María de la O Gaspar, highlights “the significant demand for existing housing in the municipality and a long waiting list, motivated by the population increase, the shortage of properties of this nature and the different stages of economic crisis , social and health of the last decades”.
He reiterates that he has held different meetings with the Housing Institute to request the construction of this type of property, in addition to addressing the purchase of homes already built in Granadilla, by the Government of the Canary Islands, so that they can be rented Social.
