Miguel Ángel Gil has been living for two years with his partner in the skeleton of plot 214 of Costa Teguise. This neighbor, who presides over the Non-Governmental Organization Esperanza y Vida Canarias, in charge of distributing food, clothing, footwear and toys among the families who need it in Lanzarote, was forced to occupy one of the abandoned houses due to lack of alternatives.
"A person who was leaving, told us that they were going to leave the house in this place", narrates Gil during an interview with La Voz, so he and his partner decided to move. "There are no houses, there are no rentals and the banks don't help, so there was no other alternative", he says on the other end of the phone. "I told him my problems and they left it for me. There are many people who have gotten rentals and have left those houses for other people or have gone to their country", he adds.
The first thing that caught his attention was seeing that life on this plot did not correspond to the media image, but that the unfinished buildings are occupied by families who mostly work in hospitality or cleaning: "There are no drug addicts or fights. All that is false, it is simply rhetoric to try to kick people out as quickly as possible, but most are humble people", he adds. "It's not what they say out there, but there is a lot of precariousness", he emphasizes. In his case, he works in a hotel, but is now on paternity leave.
This community of neighbors, which grew outside of planning, joins many others that have proliferated on the island due to lack of rental options. For example, the workers who have moved their lives to the motorhomes to be able to have a roof under which to sleep or those who have occupied the houses of the Pechiguera Lighthouse in Yaiza due to the lack of a house.
Miguel Ángel Gil became the father of a baby two weeks ago, so he calculates that in the different houses on the plot another four or five newborns live, in addition to other families with children. After receiving the judicial notification to appear in the Justice of the Peace Court of Teguise, he comments that he has transferred it to his lawyers "to try to extend everything we can, while we get housing out there, which is very difficult".
Likewise, Gil explains that to the lack of housing alternatives that push many families to live in these conditions, different realities are added, Canarians, people without papers who are dragged to live in those conditions until they manage to regularize their situation and obtain a work permit and European families who settle in the place.
To conclude, he assures that "he understands that this plot has a property and an owner, that he puts himself in their shoes and they want to recover their things, but they have also had 16 years to do many things, such as having closed the houses and not leaving them abandoned as they were left at the time". At the same time, he added that "they are in a space that does not belong to us, but it is out of necessity, not out of pleasure". In addition, he points out that people who out of necessity seek a roof in abandoned spaces have been criminalized.
"All politicians have to move heaven and earth if necessary to create social housing. There is money for parties, for Carnivals, for parking lots, for other things, but not for this", he concluded.
