Benito is a very loved person in the neighborhood of Gracia, in La Laguna. Every time he meets a neighbor, he greets them and they chat. Some even refer to him as “Benito el councilor”. He welcomes us in a cafeteria near the Faculty of Economics, Business and Tourism of the ULL and, from there, we begin a tour of several streets where, according to what he tells us, there have been burning of containers and various attempts at robbery and squatting in homes in just a few months. “What is happening here is tremendous,” he says, before warning that “it has always been a quiet place where, above all, older people live.”
Jonatan Hernández’s house is located in a narrow passage that connects El Guirre street with Camino La Hornera. He lives with his mother, now retired. He just had back surgery and is still convalescing. In front of the property there is a telephone tower. “About a year ago a boy got into stealing cables and ratchet hanging in the middle of the tower”, he indicates.
A few meters from this small family house, on one level, there is another that is owned by relatives of Jonatan, but nobody lives in it. He says they have attempted to squat on it at least three times in the last year. In the first, “they managed to get in and destroyed everything, even the doors!” he exclaims. And about a month ago, he himself had to throw out the individuals who tried to break into the house. Finally, Jonatan continues, “a kid from here managed to get in and changed the lock, and my cousin had to remove it and put another one.”
They managed to get in and destroyed everything, even the doors!
Jonatan Hernández, resident of El Guirre street
This small family nucleus on El Guirre street suffered an alleged robbery attempt in their own home, with them inside, in full confinement due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It happened around three in the morning. “A boy climbed onto the roof and we heard a noise, because it is an old house and there is a picón upstairs,” he details. When yelling at him, the young man got scared, ran towards the TF-5, jumping a slope several meters high, and suffered serious injuries to one leg. “He started shouting: ‘Help, forgive me,'” recalls Jonatan, who after the incident was visited by the couple and relatives of the man who tried to sneak into his house to ask for forgiveness. Finally, he decided not to report it but, nevertheless, given the feeling of insecurity, “we set an alarm to be a little calmer when no one is home, but even with an alarm it’s cool“.
We continue along the path with Benito, who emphasizes that they are already noticing the phenomenon of squatting in the neighborhood. Although he cannot say exactly how many homes are in this situation, he believes that the figure is around 10 and 12. The truth is that many residents of Gracia fear that this problem will “displace” from other nearby towns, such as the Barrio Nuevo, where, according to the president of the Barrio Nuevo-Viña Nava Neighborhood Association, Juan Luis Marín, there are about 25 illegally occupied properties, one of them being the so-called ‘hotel squat‘.
“I heard a noise, I turned on the light and I saw a boy inside the house”
Carmen Rodríguez opens the door of her home, located on Calle el Rey y la Reina. A couple of weeks ago, she surprised a young man, about 19 years old, slim, dark and with wavy hair inside his own house. “I heard a noise and got up from the bed. When I turned on the light I saw a boy in front of me”, she narrates. She armed herself with patience at a time when many would lose their temper. “I asked him who he was and what he was doing here,” she continues. The boy, in his opinion “harmless”, only “wanted to sleep on the floor”. Naturally, Carmen threatened the intruder with immediately calling the police, something she did just after he left the building through the roof, through which he previously agreed. “Then two patrols came and tried to find him, but I don’t know, I already lost track of the issue,” she says. Her husband and her, as in the case of Jonatan and her mother, have decided to set an alarm to feel a little safer.
In 47 years that I have lived here, something like this had never happened to me.
María Jesús Carvallo, resident of Universo street
The last stop is at the house of María Jesús Carvallo, located on Calle Universo. She greets us from the window and invites us to come up. María Jesús was not at home on Good Friday, when she was robbed. It was her tenant, who lives in the house next door to hers -both are connected by a glass door-, who warned her that they had stolen all the money she had from her and that they had also managed to break into her home. “They threw away all the clothes but found no money,” she says with an incredulous smile. “In 47 years that I have lived here, it is the first time something like this has happened to me,” she details.
Next Thursday, June 2, at six in the afternoon, the neighborhood representatives will meet with the Councilor for Citizen Security of the City Council of San Cristóbal de La Laguna, Alejandro Marrero, to convey the situation of the neighborhood and, therefore, the certain sense of insecurity of the people who live in it. “At the moment, we have only felt the support of the councilors of the Canarian Coalition (CC) who have been concerned about what is happening,” says Benito, before saying goodbye.
The City Council is already working on a solution
official sources of Municipality of San Cristobal de La Laguna They have indicated to this newspaper that the Citizen Security area, headed by Alejandro Marrero, has been working with residents for a month to find a solution to the squatting attempts in the Gracia neighborhood.
In this sense, the aforementioned sources confirm that they are aware of the feeling of insecurity that exists among the residents, but, at the same time, they point out that the National Police has no record of reports of robberies in the area.
In any case, next Thursday’s meeting will serve to meet the demands of the neighborhood group and launch a work table to resolve them.
