PHOTOS: Provided by PAH Lanzarote
About fifteen members of the Platform of People Affected by Mortgages of Lanzarote gathered this Thursday in front of the Courts of Arrecife. With this initiative, the group defended the "right to decent housing" and showed their "support" to their colleagues in Madrid, who this Thursday, Friday and Saturday are celebrating, before the Supreme Court, a conference with which they intend to "pay tribute to the victims of the crisis" and demand a series of changes in housing at the national level.
Carrying signs of "Stop Evictions" and "Without justice there are no rights", with their concentration the members of the PAH of Lanzarote have joined those demands made by the group before the Supreme Court. Among them, they highlight the "immediate halt to all evictions without an alternative of decent housing", the "effective application" of the regulations that require the elimination of "abusive clauses" from contracts and the "acquittal" of all those arrested or fined during mobilizations against evictions.
Through a statement, the Platform explains the context from which its demands start, and for which it also holds public authorities responsible, accusing them of having an "antisocial behavior". The group criticizes that since the real estate bubble "collapsed" at the beginning of the crisis in 2008, "by force, citizens have been expelled from their homes, entire families, regardless of age, the presence of children, the elderly and dependents". "Perpetual debts have been generated and people whose only desire had been to have a decent roof and work to pay for it have been condemned to 'civil death'. In the last eight years there have been more than 600,000 foreclosures, with the result of at least 200,000 expulsions from the habitual residence", they lament.
Halt of evictions and annulment of processes without the right to defense
In this context, the group, in which it points out that many citizens have found a "point of support" in a "panorama of suffering and pain that even costs human lives", makes a series of demands to justice. It demands, in addition to the "immediate halt to all evictions without an alternative of decent housing", the "effective application of European regulations (CJEU) that require the elimination of all abusive clauses from contracts, compensating those affected for the damages produced". "Consequently, all procedures already completed in which there has been no right to defense must be annulled and the debts generated in those illegal processes must be canceled", they defend.
Likewise, they ask that "the allegedly criminal activities of the financial entities that promoted the bubble and benefited from the crisis be investigated and judged, and that political responsibilities be judicially purged" and that the "decriminalization of the occupation of empty homes out of necessity" and the "classification of the crime of usury" be promoted.
As a fifth point, they request that the sale of social housing to the so-called vulture funds be investigated and "protect the victims of their evictions and adopt measures to repair the damage caused". Finally, they demand the "acquittal of all those arrested and fined for participating in mobilizations against evictions, as they have only fulfilled their duty to defend Human Rights".
Bailouts to "speculators" in a context of "humanitarian crisis"
"In Spain, financial entities and speculators created for years the conditions for the generation of a real estate bubble for which a majority of the population became indebted for decades to access housing. In 2008, the economic system associated with this bubble collapsed, and its direct result was massive unemployment and the degradation of the living conditions of the population. Since then, financial entities have executed hundreds of thousands of judicial procedures, of dubious legality, against the victims of the bubble", the Platform points out in its statement.
"In this context of humanitarian crisis, the public authorities came to the rescue of the speculators, especially the savings banks, contributing more than 53,000 million euros of public funds. At the same time, they undertook social cuts, lowered wages, froze pensions, forgave tax evasion, blocked the prosecution of those responsible for the bubble and refused to approve a popular initiative that collected one and a half million signatures for the halt of evictions", they recall.
"Antisocial" behavior and "violation" of fundamental rights
For the PAH, the "antisocial" behavior of the public authorities has reached the point of "boycotting" the resolutions of the Court of Justice of the European Union that condemned Spain, "for keeping alive a procedure of inhuman executions and evictions". They allude in this sense to the judgment of the Aziz case, of March 14, 2013, which "declared that the procedures for collecting mortgage debts violated fundamental rights, prevented defense, and allowed massive banking abuse".
"Even so, the authorities responsible for stopping this injustice have done everything possible to protect the interests of financial power. In particular, the Supreme Court maintains to this day that "foreclosures cannot be suspended because they are not so harmful to debtors" (Judgment of December 23, 2015), or that "floor clauses are abusive, but that returning all the money to those affected would be dangerous for the financial system" (Judgment of May 9, 2013)", the group reproaches.
Thus, the PAH affirms in that statement that "the list of acts of violation of Fundamental Rights by financial powers and their accomplices in political power includes the scam of preferred shares, the sale of social housing to vulture funds, the peaceful coexistence with dozens of daily evictions, the revolving doors, the Gag Law, judicial fees, the criminalization of families without resources who recover bank homes to sleep under a roof, the reform of article 135 of the Constitution, the Black cards and chronic corruption".
"However, the letter and the meaning of many laws continue to appeal to an idea of justice that defends the weak, punishes the guilty and, -as established in the Preamble of the Constitution, guarantees democratic coexistence in accordance with a fair economic and social order in which the exercise of human rights is protected", recalls the Platform. It also points out that "above all, we have the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of the United Nations, of mandatory compliance, which recognizes the right to housing and decent living conditions".
