In 2021 and in the first four months of 2022, 313 evictions were stopped in the Canary Islands, according to data from the Government of the Canary Islands. According to those provided by the General Council of the Judiciary, only during this first quarter, 676 launches were carried out, that is, people who were evicted from their homes by court order, which represented an increase of 10% in relation to the same period. from the previous year. According to these data, the Canary Islands have been ranked as the third community with the highest rate of launches until March of this year, which is set at 31.3 per 100,000 inhabitants.
Behind these numbers there are sleepless nights, anguish, comings and goings to social services or to the courts, of people who, for the most part, are completely unaware of the legal procedure by which they end up losing their homes, a lack of resources that makes that many times the attempt to stop these evictions is late.
These are figures that reflect names such as Ana María, who on July 4 managed to stop, for the third time, the eviction of what has been her home for the last 17 years, the one that first belonged to her parents, mortgaged until her death, that of her sister, now deceased, and that of her who, at 58 years old, with two teenage children, an unemployment benefit for people over 52 years of 463 euros, has been in the position of eating and get ahead or pay a mortgage that he could not afford.
Ana María is an example of the need that the population in general has for basic legal training, to know the resources to which they are entitled, and the need for the system, but also financial entities, to stop crushing people.
“When I received the first notice, they told me to go present my papers to the court and that they would tell me there,” says Ana María. “I thought it was to deliver them to a registry office or something like that, and what I found was the eviction hearing, with the lawyer from the financial entity, the judge, and me there without a lawyer” he says as if he had not finished yet believe it
He responded as best he could, as he knew, to what the judge asked him, who ended up ruling that he should leave the house. That first eviction, thanks to the fact that Ana María was already in contact with social services, was stopped. But a second came. “There they assigned me a court-appointed lawyer. After a lot of begging him to explain to me what he was doing, to give me the papers that he had presented, in the end I managed to get them to give them to me and I went directly to the court and presented them myself, and he stopped.
This resident of Santa Cruz tells that at that point she had already heard about the anti-eviction protocol of the Capital City Council. “I went to City hall and they told me that since it was already paralyzed, that when the next warning arrived, I should go to activate it.”
And it came. She did it on June 21, with a release date for that Monday, July 4. “On the 21st I went to the City Hall and they told me that they had activated the protocol, but on June 30th I still did not know anything, and the eviction was for the 4th. I called by phone and they answered me, I think, from Housing, and there They said that just on the 30th the papers of the vulnerability report had gone out to the court and to La Caixa, ”says Ana María in one go.
However, the next day, he received a call confirming that the eviction had not been stopped because the report had not reached the court, “I don’t know why, and they told me that on Monday at half past ten it would be carried out.” . And I went into despair.”
“I understand that this house is not mine -he continues- that it already belongs to the bank, I don’t want to stay here like a cheek, I’m not a scoundrel. I am someone who does not have a family, my parents passed away, I have no siblings, nor a relative to turn to to help me collect my things and be able to stay in his house. I need to take my things with me, not only my children’s clothes and mine, but I have to dismantle a house in which I have lived for 17 years, paintings, lamps, furniture…, they are my things, the only thing I have, but not I have no one to pick me up. When they tell me that I am vulnerable, what I answer is that what I am is on the threshold of poverty”.
Ana María’s desperation led her to try to contact the mayor, José Manuel Bermúdez, directly, and she sent him a message through Facebook, and he responded. “Honestly I thought that she would not answer me, she does not have to, I wrote to her and told her what was happening. She wrote me back, and she told me not to worry, that she was going to see what could be done”. That same afternoon they called Ana from the IMAS assuring that on Monday they would communicate with the judicial commission to try to stop the eviction.
However, that same Monday, Ana María saw how the locksmiths began to arrive, with the iron door ready to be installed in her house, and once again she asked the mayor for help. “My children were unhinged, crying, they had a bad night. The judicial commission told me by phone that they were trying to contact the IMAS, where they told me that they were working on it. But seeing the locksmiths arrive was terrible.”
“Shortly after, the gentlemen of the judicial commission arrived -he continues- and they told me to calm down, that the vulnerability report had already arrived and that it was going to be paralyzed”. Ana María returned to her house to wait for the definitive call that would confirm what the judicial commission had anticipated. “At five minutes they call me and tell me that it had stopped and that the mayor had done it directly by calling the court.”
“The anguish is the worst of all” sentences Ana María taking some air, to then reflect on her situation. “They sent me to Provivienda, but they are private rentals, and according to what they told me, I don’t even meet the minimum requirements to access the program, which are a minimum income, and the possibility of getting a job. So for a judge I am not vulnerable enough and for other things I am too vulnerable.
Ana María does not want to finish her story without thanking José Manuel Bermúdez for his intervention, at which point she cannot help but be moved. “I know that the mayor does not have to ask for me, because that is why there are people who work in situations like mine, but I want to thank him for caring about me, even if it is not his job to attend to his neighbors one by one, for me It was like an angel fallen from heaven, a blessing from God. I start to cry because until now nobody had done anything for me, because when you are alone, and you see that someone cares about you, you can only thank him infinitely.
This neighbor still has a long battle ahead of her, because there will be a fourth attempt. At the moment the bank has denied him a social rental claiming that there is already a sentence and that they cannot do anything. Ana knows that she has to go but she needs a house where she can take her things, or at least a place where she can store them and a house where she can settle with her children. “The rents are 700 or 800 euros and I cannot access those flats with 463 euros. I need a house, I don’t care if it’s outside my neighborhood, but I can’t go to another municipality either because there isn’t the aid that exists in Santa Cruz”.
