The approval of the new Housing Law this Wednesday in the Senate will allow the Cabildo of Lanzarote to initiate the procedures "imminently, definitively and with all legal guarantees" to deliver the houses of Valterra to those who have been their legitimate owners for the last 70 years.
The text approved this Wednesday by the Upper House, and last May in the Congress of Deputies, contains an additional provision that grants "the ownership of these homes to the Cabildo of Lanzarote, which may initiate the procedure to identify the owners of each of these homes and proceed to grant the corresponding ownership deeds".
From the Corporation they point out that this circumstance is possible "thanks to an agreement promoted by the senator for Lanzarote, Manuel Fajardo, between the Social Institute of the Navy and the Cabildo of Lanzarote, which has had to assume the powers initially entrusted to the City Council of Arrecife, after the blockade suffered with the arrival of Astrid Pérez to the Mayor's Office".
The president of the Cabildo of Lanzarote, María Dolores Corujo, wants to share "the immense happiness that a group of families must be feeling who were abandoned to their fate by the government of the Popular Party, and who are starting a new life without fear of losing the roof under which they live after decades of uncertainty".
Corujo has announced that the First Island Institution will put "all its resources" at the service of those affected: "We are going to open an advisory office with which we want to help resolve the doubts and questions that may arise in the processing of files that do justice to these people", he said.
The senator for Lanzarote, Manuel Fajardo, expressed himself in the same vein, who at the end of the session in the Senate was "very happy" for having contributed to unblocking a situation "that should embarrass and shame more than one public representative of the Popular Party".
Fajardo also wanted to thank "the work, the predisposition and the collaboration of the Social Institute of the Navy and the Cabildo of Lanzarote to comply with a commitment acquired by the Socialist Party in 2019".
The origin of the lawsuit
From the Cabildo they remember that the Valterra neighborhood has a total of 200 homes built in 1955 by the Social Institute of the Navy, with the participation of different canneries, "for the use of workers related to fishing as official protection homes".
However, while the State delivered 130 to the tenants, "a lawsuit was initiated over the other 70 when the three canneries claimed their ownership". "Thus, the residents have lived with the fear of being evicted from their homes at any time and without being able to intervene on them as their legal rights are not recognized", they add from the Cabildo.