About 80 university students, including a young woman from Lanzarote, are going to file a collective lawsuit against the Helmántica I and II student residences in Salamanca for misappropriation. And, they claim that the property of these centers does not allow them to collect the belongings they left there when the state of alarm was decreed due to the health crisis of the coronavirus and that it refuses to return the deposit and what was charged in advance for the month of June.
"When the state of alarm was decreed, my colleagues and I returned home with the minimum, leaving our clothes, our notes and personal things, thinking that we would be there for two weeks or a month at most," said Marian Sánchez, who is from Tahíche and studies Occupational Therapy in Salamanca. "There are people who left computers, my partner for example left insulin and things for medications and I left all the clothes, thinking we were going to return," she added in statements to La Voz.
Seeing that the state of alarm was prolonged, Marian says that "in April" they contacted the residence to see how to deal with the payment of monthly payments. "Because we were willing to pay some money, since we still had the room reserved and our things were there, but they told us no, that either we paid the full monthly payment or nothing. Then we said no, that we were not going to do that, and they informed us that they would keep the deposit and the month of June that we had already paid in advance, so we contacted a lawyer," she says.
About 1,300 euros per person
According to the Lanzarote native, last week, after the state of alarm ended, several parents traveled to the residences to collect their children's belongings, but "they found that they were not allowed to enter, unless they signed a paper rescinding the contract." This, according to the young woman, meant that the students "were not going to receive either the deposit or the month of June", which is "about 1,300 euros per person".
Writing that Marian Sánchez claims the center forces her to sign in order to collect her belongings
Marian Sánchez herself also traveled to Salamanca this Sunday and this Monday she has tried to access her residence, where she claims that the same thing has happened to her. Thus, together with another colleague, she explains that she has filed a complaint in the Court requesting precautionary measures to be able to collect her belongings. "And now we will go to the Police," said the Lanzarote native, who claims that other affected people have also already filed complaints at the police station.
According to Marian Sánchez, the owner of the two Helmántica residences in Salamanca also owns residences for the elderly and was "denounced on Alberto Chicote's television program for the treatment he gave them."
