On a day like today, still at night (shortly before six in the morning), ten years ago, the last demolition of a coastal town in the Canary Islands began. fell cho vitoa unique enclave between Las Caletillas beach and the Endesa thermal power plant, in the municipality of candlemas, after starting four years ago (October 7, 2008) the first demolition of those houses that were not first-time. That day, 23 of the 31 houses fell, while the eight that remained standing were destroyed by a large backhoe shovel on November 16, 2012, despite the resistance of the neighbors, many of whom were thrown away by the members of the Civil Guard, about 50 GRS agents who had been displaced from Seville two days before.
One of the first to be taken from his home was Tomas Gonzalez, the most demanding of the neighbors, together with his wife Montse and their children. His house was the first to fall due to the action of the pickaxe, when it was already dawn and the then mayor of Candelaria, José Gumersindo García, was in the area, received with insults and booing. The municipal councilor tried to mediate with the neighbors so that they would give up his resistance and offered him “12,000 euros in social rent for two years until a dozen social houses are built near Cho Vito,” Tomás González told us.
However, the fainting of Elba González, one of the neighbors, with an anxiety attack, set the fire even higher that morning. The residents decided to entrench themselves, perched in some cases on the terraces or rooftops of their homes, shouting “De Cho Vito will not move us.”
Some left with mattresses and other belongings, while the youngest continued to resist. Tomás González, his family and several friends, climbed on the roof of the house, while the neighbors launched chants such as “De Cho Vito will not move us.” At 8:05 a.m., the Civil Guard agents proceeded to enter the González house and proceeded to enter it. They were the first to be evicted from their home. “The ringleader must be evicted first,” was an order from the government delegate María del Carmen Hernández Bento, according to Tomás, who burst into tears sitting next to the beach in Callaos surrounded by a large group of friends and dozens of journalists that reported live on the latest major demolition of homes in the Canary Islands.
“Yesterday an eviction law was approved by the national government, and today they have not evicted us, they have evicted us”, How can this be possible?`” Tomás González questioned that day, who since then has not given up on the effort to remember what they consider “the greatest social injustice” that occurred in Candelaria, after the disappearance of 31 houses that constituted, according to them, a fishing village built before the 1988 Coastal Law came into force.
After a long time without returning to the place that was his home and that of a hundred neighbors, Tomás González visited Cho Vito yesterday, still with contained rage: “It saddens me that a place of life has become a dump, with a I walk with rotten wood,” he said, while recalling “the physical and psychological consequences that the demolition left on many of Cho Vito’s residents, such as his own wife Montse, Elba, and those who have died of sadness along the way.”
At least, he acknowledges, he has the consolation that “after Cho Vito there have been no more demolitions in the Canary Islands, because the Carretón de La Matanza, Taganana, the Agache coast, El Remo, La Bombilla, Tufia and Ojos de Garza stopped. , because all those towns were in the pillory, when it was said then that Costas was going to start demolishing Cho Vito and finish in La Graciosa”, explains the one who was a spokesman for the residents, who today is still waiting for the final sentence of the European Court that initially he agreed with the neighbors, although in truth it is of little use. As it is of little use that they promised those eight families that had their only home there, that after two years of rent they were going to be rehoused in the 15 homes that the City Council was going to build on a plot just above Cho Vito: “ Yet another deception, because that unit of action was for a green area, on land donated for that purpose by Mr. Landa, the planning change was never fully implemented”, recalls Tomás González.
