Lawyer Ayose Hernández, legal representative of twenty people affected by the evictions of more than 60 abandoned homes in Playa Blanca, spoke this Wednesday on Radio Lanzarote-Onda Cero to respond to the Provincial Court's order that annulled the precautionary measures imposed by the Investigating Court number 4 of Arrecife and that forced the eviction of a hundred people, including 24 minors, in January 2024.
The Court sided with the Fuenmayor law firm in an order dated March 21, overturning the decision of Judge Ricardo Fiestras, which resulted in a hundred people who resided in these homes in Las Coloradas, owned by the Gran Canaria-based entity Explotaciones e Inversiones Adara SL, ending up on the street.
"Justice sometimes works as it works. The order says it quite clearly, what it does is instrumentalize criminal law to adopt a precautionary measure with that simple objective," Hernández began on the morning show Buenos días, Lanzarote about the judicial decision.
Hernández has classified the order as "a Frankestein" and has called it "nonsense". "It was a precautionary measure adopted without any of the legal grounds for it and an order, I mean the one from the Investigating Court number 4, full of inconsistencies," added the lawyer, who criticized the Prosecutor's Office's position in the process, "it seems that it is doing a favor to the people it evicts, which it says is with the intention of being able to help them, when among the firm's clients there were people undergoing chemotherapy treatment, minors, pregnant women, etc."
During his radio intervention, Hernández explained that this ruling by the Provincial Court opens the possibility of a claim "for an obvious, abnormal and malfunctioning of the administration of Justice." Thus, he added that "it is not about paying them retroactive rent, but about compensating them for the abrupt and forced loss of the use of the home they have had without legal guarantees," in addition to the belongings they had to leave on the property. His appeal has been the only one that has been resolved favorably, since other affected parties
In addition, he assured that "before the complaint was processed by the investigating body number 4," the developer filed the complaint in another Court and that "they took it and withdrew it because they did not agree to the precautionary measure."
"We came to the sad conclusion that justice is not always the same for everyone," Hernández added. The lawyer recalled that when a person's home is occupied, "the investigating judge does not adopt precautionary measures." However, "a developer, who is not occupying those homes for themselves, but what they intend is to carry out a business project, however, yes, we adopt said measure and we also vacate not one or two, but hundreds of homes."
The Court revokes the judicial decision that evicted a hundred people in Playa Blanca, but these people have already been evicted from the concrete skeletons and will not be able to return. The defense of twenty of the evicted has indicated that they occupied these unfinished homes due to "a situation of need and that, in any case, there was peaceful possession," where "there was no crime of usurpation" and that "the appropriate route in this case was the civil one."
"Sometimes it seems that we are banging our heads against a wall because what we were asking for was not so impossible either and obviously the only thing we intended was that if they effectively had to leave the property, at least a trial would be held. Here all people must have the right to a procedure with all the guarantees, we cannot flatly condemn people,"
"The judicial system is important and the rule of law is also," he continued. In this sense, the lawyer has explained that they are going to try to close the procedure for the minor offense, "what cannot be done is to have a minor offense open for so long and especially people who continue to be investigated, when in reality there is no legitimate interest on the part of the complainant."
