Last Wednesday it was a week ago that the residents of houses 9, 11 and 13 of the Camino de La Ermita, in the neighborhood of La Salud, in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, were evicted due to imminent risk of detachment of the slope that is on their estate. Since then, and thanks to Municipal Housing, they have been in rented flats in other areas of the city. However, those affected are not having a good time, especially at the time when they have had to live this situation.
Francisco is one of them. He is 63 years old and lives with his wife, one of their three children, and his partner. He tells DIARIO DE AVISOS that he is “screwed up” because he very much misses his house, which he built with his own hands 41 years ago, with his wife and children.
“Despite having taken all the things, this is not my home, and we do not feel well. They are many years living there. We made it from scratch because there was only one room and a couple of caves and we did it little by little, with a lot of sacrifice, ”says Francisco.
He says that “at first officers came to put the blocks,” but that over time he began to work in the south and learned to “whitewash and do everything.”
This neighbor of the Camino de la Ermita is a sailor by profession. He spent 32 years working for a maritime transport company in the Islands, and says that all he earned was to build his house. So now that he looks without her, he feels “very dejected.”
Added to this sensation is the “impotence” that he feels when verifying that work has not begun to rehabilitate the slope, whose technical report revealed, last November, that there were some medium-sized blocks that were detached and held only by the existing mesh, that some sections of basalt were cracked and at risk of falling, and that there were sections of mesh and screens that were in poor condition and with remains from the slope itself.
“They were in such a hurry to evict us because the risk was imminent, and because they had to start as soon as possible, and there they are doing nothing,” says this neighbor, who assures that they have been “lied to” and that he believes that the work will begin “later of Christmas”.
Francisco is a positive person, but he admits that he feels sad. “It is not easy, and I have patience and I try to take things well, but now this is your turn, at this time, and it reaches your heart,” he says.
Where are the parties going? In the new apartment, but without her other children and without her grandchildren. He says that “the thing is not for parties, and less with the COVID”, to which he does not want to expose his wife, who is sick, and whom he encourages every day because she is very sensitive.
Your New Years wish? It is clear to him. Cheers and go home as soon as possible.
