The claim for non-payment of one month's rent for the amount of 317.32 euros, corresponding to June 2022, was what triggered the judicial procedure that ended with a conviction and the subsequent eviction of a family with three minor children in their care this Friday from the three-bedroom, two-bathroom apartment in which they lived, located on Calle Norte, in the Arrecife neighborhood of La Vega.
The company La Lagonda S.L. (owner of the building after its award in a mortgage foreclosure procedure followed by the Court of First Instance No. 5 of Arrecife in 2012) filed a verbal trial lawsuit in the courts of Arrecife on September 30, 2022 against Jorge Mena, the tenant in whose name the contract for the evicted house was. In addition, "in the event that the defendant filed an objection", the plaintiff requested that "a claim for eviction for non-payment and amounts owed and the claim thereof be filed". The amount claimed was the aforementioned monthly payment of 317.32 euros.
As Jorge himself explained to LA PROVINCIA/DLP and corroborated by his lawyer, Juan David García Pazos, that amount was paid as soon as he became aware that it appeared as unpaid [it was paid on November 10, 2022, according to the judgment] and that the tenant attributed to "a computer error by the bank, which did not verify the scheduled periodic transfer", according to the defendant. However, even so, the judicial process ended in a conviction for the defendant by the Court of First Instance No. 5 of Arrecife on December 26, 2023.
The lawyer García Pazos requested the court that his client "had social vulnerability and that the file be initiated" to avoid being evicted from the house in which he had resided for more than a decade, until Friday, September 27. However, "the lawyer of the Administration of Justice, without passing it on to the judge and without competence to do so, decided to reject the incident of nullity saying that the required documentation has not been presented", the lawyer points out.
He insists that the route, also valid according to the lawyer, that was used in this regard was "the presentation of a sworn statement of the family's vulnerability situation in view of the haste we had" and recalls that "the decree of the year 2021, as a result of covid, of suspension of evictions in case of vulnerability situation, was extended in 2023 until December 2024 [through Royal Decree-Law 8/2023]".
"My client is not a squatter"
Regarding the accusations by the lawyer José María Martín, representative of the property of the building, about "the damages caused to the property by Jorge Mena and in others that he had squatted in the same block of flats renting them to his compatriots", García Pazos denied those facts: "It is absolutely false", he stated. "All Jorge has done is work for that man [the lawyer José María Martín] doing maintenance jobs and he never paid him."
"My client", García Pazos insisted, "is not a squatter because he had a rental contract and has religiously paid his rent and has the receipts for those payments. He has not brought people to live in the building either", as denounced by the lawyer Martín.
Read the full story in La Provincia
