Spain has about 9,000 'squats' this year, almost half in Catalonia and with Barcelona tripling Madrid

MADRID, 30 Oct. (EUROPA PRESS) -

In Spain, nearly 9,000 'squatters' were reported in real estate between January and June of this year, almost half of which took place in Catalonia, according to the latest data provided by the Ministry of the Interior and collected by Europa Press.

Specifically, the total number of complaints for occupation of real estate registered by the State Security Forces and Bodies amounted to 8,857 in that period. Of these, 3,770, 42%, took place in Catalonia, with the province of Barcelona in the lead. 2,838 were recorded there, more than triple that of Madrid, which, with 813, is the second province in Spain with the most occupations.

The second community in which more incidents of this type were reported in the first half of the year was Andalusia, with 1,276 (14% of the total). The 402 in Seville stand out, followed by the 225 in Malaga and the 208 in Cádiz.

In the Valencian Community, the complaints reached 1,093 (12%): 567 in Valencia, 367 in Alicante and 159 in Castellón. The fourth in the ranking is the Community of Madrid (with 813, 9.1%), followed by Castilla-La Mancha (387, 4.3%), Murcia (338, 3.8%) and the Canary Islands ( 250, 2.8%).

The community with the fewest occupations was La Rioja, which registered 24 complaints for this reason. In Asturias there were 31, in Cantabria 44 and in Navarra 51.

Teruel is the only province in which no occupation was reported in the first half of the year. In Soria and Zamora there were three; in Melilla, five; in Ourense, six and in Ceuta, seven.

These are the data that the Government has sent to the Vox deputies who asked to know the reasons for the high number of occupations in Catalonia. In its response, to which Europa Press has had access, Interior attributes "the increase in this type of crime in recent years" to the "coincidence of various factors."

Specifically, it highlights two: that there is a "high number of empty properties" and also of "people who lose their homes due to debts or loss of employment due to the economic situation derived from the concatenation of the Covid health crisis, the logistics crisis and of international production", aggravated by the invasion of Ukraine, and its "serious impact on the price of energy and basic food products".

With regard to the measures to be adopted to combat this criminal phenomenon, the Interior recalls that in 2020 the Secretary of State for Security established a specific protocol for the action of the State Security Forces and Bodies in the event of the illegal occupation of real estate and that the Attorney General's Office It also promoted an instruction in the same direction to guide the proceeding of judicial proceedings.