Spain adds 9,000 'squats' of homes in a year and a half, a third of them inhabited houses

Madrid has the highest number of complaints, tripling that of Barcelona, ​​and between one and the other are Valencia, Malaga, Seville and Murcia

MADRID, 27 Nov. (EUROPA PRESS) -

Spain accumulates 9,949 complaints for 'squatting' of homes in the last year and a half, of which 3,646 (36.64%) were inhabited and 5,803 (58.23%), according to the latest data sent to Congress by the Ministry inland.

These are the figures that the department headed by Fernando Grande-Marlaska has sent to a group of Vox deputies who were interested in the evolution of this phenomenon.

The ministry takes the opportunity to explain to them that the generic term "property occupation" includes different types of crimes of the Penal Code. On the one hand, home invasion (article 202), some cases in which the Security Forces, he points out, act "urgently and peremptorily, evicting the homes immediately" provided they have permission from the resident and the latter has filed a complaint ".

On the other hand, review, article 245 is related to the usurpation of real estate "whether with violence or not, and whether they are residential or not." Here, he adds, the behavior of the agents is subject to a judicial eviction order and the manifest intention of the owner to recover his property, unless they can intervene at the time the crime is being committed, "with violence or intimidation". , in which case they can do immediate evictions.

After these explanations, the Government highlights that "complaints for 'squatting', without differentiating between trespassing and usurpation of homes, have dropped between 7 and 10% so far in 2022."

The response, to which Europa Press has had access, includes a data table of complaints by provinces, differentiated if the houses were inhabited or not. Specifically, between 2021 and July 2022, a total of 9,949 complaints were recorded, an average of 523 complaints per day.

The Community of Madrid is at the forefront of complaints of both inhabited and empty homes. Thus, 972 'squats' of inhabited houses and 805 of uninhabited houses were recorded in this period, that is, a total of 1,777, which is more than triple the figures registered in Barcelona, ​​which is the sixth with the most complaints in the ranking of provinces.

There, the total number of complaints was 524 and, unlike in Madrid, there were more those related to houses without inhabitants (305) than with them (219).

The second province with the most housing 'squats' is Valencia, with 979 (633 uninhabited and 346 inhabited), followed by Malaga, another coastal area with a large number of second homes. In this Andalusian province, 955 complaints have accumulated (805 relating to uninhabited houses and 155 inhabited).

Seville is the fourth with the most complaints about squatting, with a total of 863, mostly also empty (667), compared to 196 inhabited. The fifth is Murcia (614 'squats', 449 uninhabited dwellings and 165 inhabited) and the sixth is Barcelona with the aforementioned data.

In seventh place is another coastal province such as Alicante, with a global figure of 430, and once again here there are more empty squatted homes (252) than inhabited ones (430). In the Balearic Islands, 391 complaints have been recorded (203 of non-inhabited properties and 188 inhabited).

The Interior indicates as causes of the increase in this type of crime the coincidence of various factors, of which two clearly stand out: the "high" number of empty buildings (in fact, it points out that there are more complaints of usurpation) and people who lose his home due to debts or loss of employment, due to the economic situation derived from the concatenation of the Covid crisis, the "crisis of international logistics and production" and that generated by the effects of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

In any case, the ministry points out, regarding the data offered, it must be taken into account that in the Crime Statistical System the field related to the use of housing is not mandatory, "so these figures may not coincide with the data available for total occupied dwellings".