Families, with minors in their care, who are in a situation of suffering imminent evictions and evictions feel deceived and abandoned to their fate, wondering, as Podemos Canarias also does, what is the problem that the minority Government presided over by Fernando Clavijo has in enforcing the agreements approved in the Chamber to avoid these dramas.
It should be remembered that the Podemos Canarias Parliamentary Group presented an initiative on the right to housing in May 2018 that was approved unanimously by the Chamber.
It agreed on several points, one of which proposed, I quote verbatim: "establish coordination protocols between the General Council of the Judiciary and the town councils of the entire Autonomous Community of the Canary Islands, in order to define joint operation actions between judges and competent social services units so that, in cases of evictions, the competent public administrations grant families and people in vulnerable situations an adequate housing alternative, or offer them social rent".
Another of the points qualified: "evictions that affect people without resources to obtain alternative housing will only be carried out after there has been a genuine and effective consultation with these people and that the public administrations have taken all the indispensable steps, up to the maximum of their available resources, so that the evicted people have alternative housing, especially in those cases involving families, the elderly, children and/or other people in vulnerable situations".
And in the last plenary session of Parliament, on January 15, we asked the Minister of Employment, Social Policies and Housing, Cristina Valido, what measures her Ministry has planned to avoid the imminent evictions and evictions of families facing this situation.
Families - I know many in Lanzarote, but I know that it is a problem that, to a greater or lesser extent, affects all of the Canary Islands - who are not only desperate, but also disappointed with the false promises of help that never arrive.
They feel immersed in the curse of living in a community where speculation and the enrichment of a few seems to be above the commitment of those who have the obligation to guarantee the basic needs of a part of our citizenry, who in a situation of unemployment or precarious employment, helplessly see how their most elementary rights to decent housing are violated.
We know that both Minister Valido and the Director General of Housing, Pino de León, have been meeting with some of these most vulnerable families, specifically with members of the Platform for Decent Housing in Lanzarote, one of the islands most affected by the scandalous rise in prices in residential housing rentals, caused in large part by the bubble of the uncontrolled tourist market of vacation housing, and by the shameful shortage of public housing for social rentals.
Our disappointment as a political party in this matter could not be greater, and that is despite the fact that from the first moment we offered to work constructively, together with the Government, in the search for solutions to what in our opinion is one of the most important problems for the population of the Canary Islands.
More than a year of meetings has been useless, nor have the failed promises to families who, like Miri's, are now in a critical situation, with three sick daughters, aged four, three and two, and who have received a letter in which they have just been informed that on March 1 they must vacate the house in which they live with their family.
Miri, and many other mothers like Elsa, Ana Cecilia or Angy, are still waiting for an answer that will rescue them from the fear and uncertainty of not knowing where and how they will be able to live tomorrow.
Some, in a limit situation, have been forced to occupy empty houses as the only way to provide a roof for their creatures, in this way they "badly live" in a new form of precariousness, without supplies and in conditions that no one would want for themselves or their families.
Contrary to what many believe, the people who end up occupying homes are not 'anti-system' people. Those who are and do a real 'anti-system' work are those responsible for a Canarian Government like the current one, which recklessly, far from protecting and giving solutions, expels and excludes the most needy people and families, thus violating the laws that one day they swore or promised to comply with.
What cannot be is that from the institutions, as happened recently in Lanzarote, one day the Constitution is being celebrated with great fanfare and the next day they are evicting a family, with three children, who precariously survives occupying the empty house of a bank, and that without any scruples, they want to leave them stranded on the street without a roof to cover them.
What cannot be is that when the Government of the Canary Islands is asked for help to stop the eviction, its Director General of Housing says that it cannot do anything.
She is wrong, of course she can, the people of the platform could, and on December 7 they stopped the planned launch, because for that, above all, will was needed.
Will, courage, solidarity and being clear about what the priorities are. And between the right of a family to have a roof, or the right of a bank (BBVA) to have one more of its thousands of empty homes, the choice was clear.
Because when the people no longer have another option, when it seems that they no longer have any weapon to defend themselves from injustices, they still maintain something intrinsic that no one can take away from them as long as there is life, they have the body, their own body.
And it was those bodies stripped of almost everything, who built the barrier that did not let pass those who at all costs wanted to execute the eviction.
Even the police officers present there were clear about it and acted coherently, sensitive to the situation, and knowing that the people who were protecting the house to prevent the eviction would not move, they chose to mediate and intercede for the family, begging the legal operators to postpone the eviction.
Yes, you can, ladies and gentlemen of the Government. And this was demonstrated by those who with their courageous decisions and solidary bodies, against all odds, were able to stop an eviction and enforce the Constitution on December 7.
By María del Río Sánchez
President of the Podemos Canarias Parliamentary Group
Secretary of Equality, Feminisms and LGTBI of Podemos Canarias
Candidate for Parliament for Lanzarote
