Canary Islands ended the first quarter of the year as the autonomous community with the most dismissal lawsuits filed in proportion to its population, with a rate of 95.5 per 100,000 inhabitants, according to data from the report on the effects of the crisis in the courts published every three months by the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ).
Canary Islands is followed in relative volume of dismissal lawsuits by the Community of Madrid, with 84.7 lawsuits per 100,000 inhabitants, and Catalonia, 80.8. In contrast, the territory with the lowest relative volume of dismissal lawsuits between January and March was Extremadura, with 33.9 lawsuits per 100,000 inhabitants.
In global figures, a total of 2,078 dismissal lawsuits were registered in the islands during the first quarter of this year, 10.7% less than in the same period of 2021. In Spain as a whole, 30,126 dismissal lawsuits were filed between January and March, 12.6% less than in the first quarter of the previous year.
Canary Islands was also in the first quarter the community with the most civil debt claims taken to court, the so-called debt collection proceedings, that is, special procedures provided for claiming liquid, determined, due and payable monetary debts, when such debts are stated in some type of document, under the jurisdiction of the courts of First Instance.
The judicial bodies of the islands computed in the aforementioned period a total of 18,458 debt collection proceedings, 28.4% more than in the same period of 2021, which implies that an average of 848 civil monetary claims were opened per 100,000 inhabitants, by far the highest figure in the country, the Superior Court of Justice of the Canary Islands highlights in a statement.
With regard to litigation before the Social Jurisdiction for claims of quantity, that is, lawsuits for breach of obligations in matters of Social Security or for omission of safety and hygiene measures at work, the Social courts of the islands computed from January to March 2,394 lawsuits, 0.7% more than in the same period of 2021.
In this way, Canary Islands is the second community with the most cases of this type in relative terms, with 110 lawsuits per 100,000 inhabitants. This figure has only been surpassed by the Basque Country (121.2) and the third community with the highest rate in this field was Madrid (82.2).
Bankruptcies and evictions
With regard to insolvency proceedings, or what is the same, proceedings that are opened before the Commercial courts when a natural or legal person cannot regularly meet their enforceable obligations, during the first quarter of this year Canary Islands registered 55, 44.7% more than in the same period of 2021. And the fact is that 2,394 were presented nationwide, 4.4% more than between January and March 2021.
Canary Islands recorded the fourth highest growth in this type of procedure in the reference period, only surpassed by Navarra (144.4%), Cantabria (84.6%) and the Community of Madrid (51.7%). In relative terms, the archipelago was the fifth community with the highest rate of bankruptcies per 100,000 inhabitants: 7.4. Catalonia (8.9) was the first; Asturias (8.7), the second, the Valencian Community (7.9), the third; and Madrid (7.6), the fourth.
The data referring to mortgage foreclosures (proceedings in the courts of First Instance to demand the payment of debts guaranteed by mortgage) indicate that in the islands a total of 225 proceedings were initiated between January and March 2022, 3.8 less than in the first quarter of 2021, with an average of 10.3 foreclosures per 100,000 inhabitants, three points below the national average.
The Canarian judicial bodies executed 676 evictions in the first quarter (change of possession of a property), 10% more than in the same period of last year. In relative terms, the archipelago was the third community with the highest rate of evictions in the period under study: 31.3 per 100,000 inhabitants, behind Valencia (36.6) and Murcia (35.5), and below the national average.
Of these evictions, 149 were due to mortgage foreclosure (7.2% more than in the same period of 2021) and 490 due to non-payment of rent (4.9% less than in the winter of the previous year), the remaining 37 corresponding to other concepts. In the field of non-payment of rental income, the archipelago registered 22.5 evictions per 100,000 inhabitants, the second highest rate in Spain after the Balearic Islands (23.7).
