It was Don Antonio. Impossible not to put the Don in front when it was called. Not out of courtesy or to mark distance. Not because of his physique, because he was not a big man, quite the opposite. He was small, with sad eyes and almost always seemed angry. Perhaps the Don had earned it because of the circumstances that he had to live in recent years: fighting almost at the end of his life, due to an injustice: recovering his home, from which he was finally evicted along with his wife Berta. A struggle that was echoed by an entire municipality, crossed borders and gave rise to the citizen platform ‘I also live in 102’, which accompanied them at all times along with members of the Anti Evictions platforms (PAH).
Seven years after the eviction that changed his life, Don Antonio died on Tuesday, at the age of 85, five months after Berta, his inseparable companion, did.
Antonio Méndez and Berta Ferreiro lived at 102 Ismael Domínguez Street, in Tacoronte. They lived there for 28 years until a neighboring neighbor denounced them when he understood that the property of the couple was held on the foundations of theirs despite the fact that all the evidence showed that it had been built previously.
His claim went around the Island and reached the Peninsula. It was not an eviction of payment but of continuous errors on the part of the administrations. Expertise that arrived late and badly due to the bad judicial advice that the marriage had by the successive public defenders who have handled the case.
The couple faced their first eviction on November 29, 2012 and were ultimately paralyzed with their neighbor’s promise to find a solution. Nobody forgets Don Antonio’s nerves that morning, which forced him to call the ambulance due to a power surge that he could not control despite his wife’s attempts.
For two years, Don Antonio led marches, demonstrations and processions to Candelaria to prevent it. On that occasion, he even spoke with the then president Paulino Rivero to ask him to mediate. It was useless, the deadline expired, his neighbor claimed the house and the Justice ruled in his favor. On September 19, 2014, Antonio and Berta suffered the same anguish again but in the end they lost their home.
Since then, they have lived their new life in a neighboring house, which they inherited from a neighbor whom they both cared for until the last moment because he had no family. It was friends and neighbors who refurbished the property, changed the roof and the door, painted it, and moved all the married couple’s belongings so that they didn’t have to change neighborhoods.
One of them was Cristian González, spokesperson for ‘I also live in 102’ and one of the people who accompanied Antonio until the last moment. Had it not been for this injustice, they might never have met because it was night and day. “Antonio had a slightly particular character, he was very much his and quite demanding,” assures Cristian, who until the last moment continued to give him a hand with all the papers, just like Olga, another neighbor.
Cristian went further and even accompanied him to medical examinations, they went for a walk from time to time and established a relationship with the family, his two sons and his daughters-in-law, who live in Holland.
In recent weeks Don Antonio was not feeling well. One day he went to the doctor for constant stomach pains and finally they detected cancer. However, for Cristian “Berta’s death did more to him than the illness he had because he lived for her”.
The story of 102 Ismael Domínguez street takes its two main protagonists, although no one knows for sure when it will end if the couple’s descendants decide to continue with the lawsuit against their neighbor and take him to the European courts. But the two are already far from that fight. Now it is Don Antonio’s turn to rest in peace.
