The squatters who are being evicted from a luxury complex above Taramay, Almuñécar, have been given ten days to get their things out.

In some cases, families in these 36 chalets have illegally occupied these dwellings for nearly a decade. So far, nine dwellings have been emptied with the squatters not waiting for the deadline.

As explained in a previous article, the construction work on this complex ground to a halt in 2008 with many structures still unfinished when the economic crisis hit. At that time, many families found themselves living on the streets when they couldn’t meet mortgage repayments on their own properties.

With developers and construction companies going broke right across Spain, the banks repossessed tens of thousands of properties, yet although they had the legal obligation to pay the community fees, they simply didn’t, causing block comunidades tremendous economic stress. The law courts and the administrations, of course, did nothing about it.

Furthermore, for those who had their homes repossessed, they were still saddled by a huge debt to the banks because unlike most countries where the debt is expunged when the bank repossess a property, in Spain, the banks were allowed to cripple families economically for the foreseeable future, leaving them even unable to open a bank account or obtain a phone. The banks were effectively allowed to “have their cake and eat it.”

(News/Opinion: Almunecar, Costa Tropical, Granada, Andalucia)