> if a property is not adequately secured and is left unattended, it becomes vulnerable to occupation.
> Spanish law provides for an immediate eviction procedure that can be enacted within 48 hours of illegal occupation
So if I understand properly, if you go away for the weekend and forget to close a window, you might find squatters in your house when you come back, and you can't quickly get them out in a legal way?
This is not true. Your first and second house are protected by the law. If someone enters in your first or second house when you are outside, they will get expelled in the same moment the police arrives, and they will face criminal consecuences.
The problem comes when you have 200 houses and somebody squats one of those where you don't live and you don't use. A problem for the banks, vulture funds and big renters. And to be honest, I cannot care less..
Do not forget to mention that every news tv program is sponsored by Alarms companies. That the banks, the phone companies, are sponsored and sell alarms.
Which potentially, might have something to do, which so much does this situation appears on news in comparison to other problems the country has.
Thank you for acknowledging it. It's crazy to see how there's at least 1 alarm ad whenever there is a news piece about Okupation.
Most of the occupied apartments belong to banks and big renters who would rather see the building fall apart than offering the apartments for a reasonable price/rent.
The problem for citizens isn't that they're losing their apartments/houses to Okupas, since that's a really small minority. The real problem is that some Okupas do it "professionally" for profit and can be quite violent.
It's pretty easy. Where you are registered in your city. There is an obligation to register yourself where do you live and where do you reside. If you live and work in madrid but you have a house in cadiz, then your house in cadiz is not where you live...
It's the same in France so I wouldn't even be surprised.
You can't even cut electricity/heat as it is seen inhumane and in theory you have to renovate/fix the house every time something dangerous needs to be fixed because it's illegal to provide unsafe housing.
Sometimes it takes years for people to get their house back and they often are completely trashed
France, like Spain, has strong residence protection for anyone, including homeowners. So if someone takes your house while you are away it is not legally squatting, but rather homebreaking and they will be evicted without even a trial.
If a house you own gets squatted you may stop paying for electricity/gaz/water. But to be honest apart from big corps abandoned buildings, i've never seen a squat where the electricity/water was already on.
It is illegal to rent dangerous housing. It may not be illegal to give it away in good faith, and it's certainly not your responsibility as an owner if it gets squatted. To my knowledge, and despite hearing about this constantly on homeowners forums, there has never been a case of owners being legally responsible for injuries to squatters.
> So if someone takes your house while you are away it is not legally squatting, but rather homebreaking and they will be evicted without even a trial.
At least in the US there have been cases where the squatter forged a lease and showed that to police that came to evict them. With the scant evidence the police would deem it a civil matter and you have to go to court. I'm not sure what the process is in Spain though.
Forging a lease for an empty dwelling is easy. But forging a lease for the owner's residence is much harder. You'd have to get rid of the owner's stuff, make sure the neighbors don't testify that this is the owner's residence, come up with fake papers to prove the owner lives elsewhere.
All in all, i'd be curious if you have an example because that sounds like opinion manipulation from the owners as that case is very unlikely. At least similar cases i've heard about in France have been 100% debunked. It's much more likely the owners live(d) elsewhere and had an empty dwelling squatted.
You can still get them out relatively quickly if it's your main residence. But otherwise, yeah, that's correct, which is why, instead of contacting the police, many people kick them out the old fashioned way or hire people experienced in doing so tiptoeing the line of legality.
You are right but im certain that the amount of incidents like that is really small. A little more common is the situation where someone renting runs out of money and squats to avoid going homeless.
Both types of squatters above are overrepresented and the most common one by far is the anti-capitalist squatter.
People who are fed up with high rents. Not without motives.
Corps buy entire building blocks, sometimes for renting but a lot of times just for storing capital and playing with the market.
This combined with airbnb raising the prices more for tourists while salaries i. spain stay the same ends up in rents being totally disproportionate.
Most squatters I know don't want trouble, they get inside abandoned buildings and stay unnoticed for a big lenght of time. Getting inside a building in active use is just asking for trouble, as annoying it may be for the owners it's not the best option for the okupas either.
That's precisely what fascist news organizations will have you believe, but the reality could not be further. Here in France BFMTV or CNews regularly have segments about poor people displaced from their homes by squatters (like the Maryvonne case or the Roland case) however when you check for information, you realize they were not protected by the police because they had abandoned the house for years so it was not considered their residence.
People going away for vacations, even months-long vacations are definitely protected by the law. It is illegal to break into people's home. It may not be illegal, depending on your jurisdiction, to enter an abandoned housing unit and claim it as your residence. It may still be illegal to break into it.
(when i say fascist news organizations i do mean they are run by actual fascists like Bollore, it's not a figure of speech)
> Spanish law provides for an immediate eviction procedure that can be enacted within 48 hours of illegal occupation
So if I understand properly, if you go away for the weekend and forget to close a window, you might find squatters in your house when you come back, and you can't quickly get them out in a legal way?