I read last Friday that court number 4 of Arrecife had rejected the appeals against the eviction of a hundred fellow citizens occupying Playa Blanca - 24 of them children - whose launch will finally take place on January 16.
Probably, these neighbors are living one of the most difficult situations of their lives, people who were forced to live in substandard housing because the real estate market threw them out of the system.
I deeply and humanly regret this situation they are going through and I do not think the comments received against these people are acceptable, calling them freeloaders and not wanting to pay. Please! No one in their right mind would want to live in a substandard home instead of a decent and adequate home as established in article 47 of the Spanish Constitution.
It is not their fault, the fault lies with the system and the disastrous political leadership of this country, which has failed them greatly. And not only them, but the entire citizenry, causing that today there are hardly any affordable homes and rentals.
The five years of government of Sánchez and Yolanda have tried to formalize with beautiful words the constitutional right to housing, but in reality they have materially stripped it to nothing. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, as they say.
Multiple real estate experts warned that limiting the price of homes would only generate a narrowing of supply by increasing uncertainty and insecurity. Experts warned that limiting rent increases below the inflation rate would further stifle that supply, as it has been. It was warned that giving greater protection to tenants would in practice increase their lack of protection. And it has been fulfilled.
Every market, as a human phenomenon, can commit excesses and we must always be vigilant to correct those errors in which it may incur. But the reality is that the housing market is one of the most hyper-regulated markets that exists and that it is the hyper-regulation that has ended up killing the supply and, therefore, the one that is denying the material effectiveness of the right to housing guaranteed by the Constitution.
It is immoral to blame humble fellow citizens who live in substandard housing when the fault lies with the State and specifically with the political elite of this country. It is immoral to blame vacation homes that their owners can legitimately dispose of as they see fit. It is immoral not to directly point out the culprit of everything that is happening: his Sanchidad and his Sancha Panza, Pedro and Yolanda.
