An Italian family with two children, 16 and 18 years old, has been evicted this Friday from a house they were squatting in Playa Blanca. "We don't know what to do, they have left us on the street with all our things and without a euro," the father of this family told La Voz.
According to Luigi, they entered this house located in the Villas Blancas urbanization two years and four months ago without knowing it was a squat. "We had to leave another house where we were living, we couldn't find anything, and the same day we had to leave, a friend called us who knew a girl who had a very big house and could rent us a room," says this man, who claims that they decided to enter this house until they found another place.
Therefore, he says that he paid a girl "a month's deposit" and "650 euros of rent" for "eight months", until then he asked for "some receipt or something" to "have security". "And that's when she told me it was a squat," says Luigi, who says that he then got angry and decided to pay this girl and the rest of the tenants of the house "the 650 euros of the month" so they would leave and they would stay alone in the house.
"There was a man and two girls and they left, although then they rented a room to another person without me knowing anything for 350 euros," says this Italian citizen, who points out, however, that he also reached an agreement with this man to leave the house.
He claims he tried to "get everything in order" and "pay rent"
Although Luigi considers that the woman who "rented" him the room "scammed" him, he says that he never reported her for being "a squat". However, he assures that after the rest of the tenants left, he went "to the Civil Guard" with the intention of being able to "get everything in order" and "pay rent". "And they told me that I could go to the bank or talk to the owner if I knew who he was," says this man.
After that, this man says that he was "looking for who the owner was" until he learned that the house belonged "to Banco Sabadell". "But the director told me that the house was not theirs, that they had sold it to a real estate agency," says this father, who says that he then tried to contact the real estate agency.
"But I called and called and they never answered, until one day a real estate agency calls me and tells me that they want the house and that they want to make me an offer of 3,000 euros to leave the house," says Luigi, who points out that although at first he rejected it because he had already spent "15,000 euros on fixing the house", he told them that he would "talk to the family". "This was in December 2019 and they told me that they would call me again after Christmas to agree, but to this day no one has called me," he adds.
"We have nowhere to go"
However, what Luigi did receive was an eviction order. Initially, as La Voz has been able to verify, it was scheduled to be executed on October 16, but then the Court of First Instance number 2 of Arrecife suspended it because the notification to Luigi had been "negative".
However, that same day the Court set a new date for the eviction, specifically for November 20. However, Luigi assures that the notification of the same did not reach him until a few days ago and that it was not delivered to him. "They gave it to my daughter, who is a minor," he says.
"She gave it to me about two days later, but it was already the 8th or 9th," adds Luigi, who says that since then he has been "calling the prosecutor 50,000 times" but that "she has not answered even once". "I just wanted them to give us 10, 15 or 20 more days until we had another place," he adds.
However, the eviction has finally been carried out this Friday and, during it, Luigi assures that his son has become "ill" because he "suffers from asthma". In addition, he points out that the eviction has coincided with the fact that his wife "is in Italy" and "will not be able to return to the island until January 2".
"Now I have a lot of things on the street and we don't know what to do," says this man, who says that for the moment they "don't" have "anywhere to go". In addition, he points out that in the house, in addition to the four of them, there was now "the son of his son's girlfriend", who is "four years old".
"They have left a family on the street and without a euro," insists Luigi. And, he says that he worked as a waiter in a restaurant in Playa Blanca until the Covid pandemic but that "just on March 14", in the middle of the start of the state of alarm due to Covid, he left it "to look for another job", so he was left "without ERTE and without unemployment". "And now I was doing some renovation work that I found, but we have no income," he concludes.
