Spain's squatting problem
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 796 Ratings
🗓️ 27 January 2025
⏱️ 17 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Squatting has a long history in Spain, often fuelled by high rates of homelessness.
And the country’s ongoing housing crisis means that despite being low in numbers, squatting is now a highly politicised topic.
We hear from private companies set up to evict people, from businesses making products to prevent squatters moving in, and from squatters themselves about their experiences.
Produced and presented by Stefania Gozzer
(Image: A worker takes a mattress off the balcony during the eviction of 62 families from four apartments in June 2023 in Madrid, Spain. Credit: Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, welcome to Business Daily from the BBC World Service. I'm Stefania Goetzer. Today, we're |
| 0:07.9 | heading to Spain, where the housing market is facing an issue. There are about 15,000 reports |
| 0:14.1 | per year to the authorities about squatting in Spain. Okupas, the Spanish word for squattas, |
| 0:20.7 | have become a hot topic in the country, |
| 0:23.2 | where owners have to wait an average of more than 20 months |
| 0:26.7 | to evict someone living illegally in their property. |
| 0:31.5 | We've spent about 6,000 euros trying everything to evict them, |
| 0:36.5 | first criminal and then civil law. |
| 0:39.3 | But some believe that the problem is being overstated by social media and news outlets. |
| 0:45.5 | All this hate comes from campaigns and media attention that doesn't focus on the issues that forced |
| 0:51.8 | us to occupy. So how big of an issue are home-illegal occupations in Spain? |
| 0:57.2 | And what is causing them? |
| 0:59.0 | We find out on this edition of Business Daily. |
| 1:05.7 | We are in Puente de Vallecas, the working class neighborhood in Madrid, |
| 1:10.4 | and we are standing outside a one-floor house. are in Puente de Vallecas, the working class neighborhood in Madrid, |
| 1:17.3 | and we are standing outside a one-floor house that is divided into four apartments. |
| 1:22.8 | It belongs to Angel Pereiras. He inherited it from his father-in-law, |
| 1:27.2 | but he hasn't been able to access it for the last seven years. |
| 1:32.7 | We inherited this house from my wife's grandparents. |
| 1:35.9 | It has passed from generation to generation. |
| 1:39.1 | The last member of our family who lived there was an uncle. |
| 1:45.9 | Two or three months after his death, the neighbors told us the property had been invaded. These are small, |
... |
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