by It was in Premiá de Mar where a complaint about the newest trick of the squatter mafias was noted for the first time on official paper: Pay rent to the owner even if you don’t want to.
Many months of payment simulation have not been necessary, just the from the occupation until the owner, in this case the owner, has realized that the house has been taken from him. On the day of the trial, the squatter will have one more pin with which to pin his case before the judge and delay his expulsion.
The Court of Instruction 3 of Mataró investigates what was initially initiated as a minor crime of usurpation of housing and now, after also supporting the thesis the prosecutor’s office, It is prosecuted by criminal means as a crime of trespass. The last measure taken in the investigation, after twelve weeks of hiatus in the case, has been sent to the Mossos to corroborate that the property is still occupied.
350 euros per month
The apartment supposedly raided is in the center of Premiá. the owner, FGZ, spends two-month periods outside Spain for his work. “And she is not exactly a millionaire,” clarifies her lawyer, Judith Silveira.
On March 10, upon returning home from one of his professional trips, FGZ opened the door to his house, but, once upstairs, he couldn’t put the key in the door of his apartment; They had changed the lock. The victim, stunned, rang the doorbell. Without allowing her access, she was met at the door by a man she doesn’t know at all. “We are renting here. If you have any problems, call the owner or the police. We have nothing more to say,” she snapped.
It was no use repeating over and over again that she is the owner. From that nervous moment, the victim began to understand Why was he receiving a mysterious monthly transfer of 350 euros in his checking account since January?always without concept, only your first and last name.
“The woman has her personal belongings, her clothes, her TV, her documentation in that home,” explains the lawyer. “When they entered the house, They shuffled through his papers and must have found his account number, although we believe they had obtained it even before, by reaching into the mailbox. From that moment on, they paid him the false rent.” The payment continued until, in June, FGZ changed its account number.
Without police help
The raid being investigated in Mataró may be significant in terms of occupation, as it combines its novelty with many of the elements that are repeated in these cases. Among them, police abstention. On the day of the scene at the door, the Mossos did not want to attend. “They are overwhelmed,” says Silveira. “They told him to file a complaint in court, without further ado, because he couldn’t do anything. Furthermore, the neighbors have not complained nor do we know the exact date on which the home was taken.”
The task of recovering the house appears arduous. They have had to spend six months of resources for the instruction to change from a minor crime to a serious criminal offense. Now, when the investigating judge Yolanda Diazowner of one of the most jammed courts in Maresme, calls the “ignored occupants” of the Premiá apartment to testify, they will provide proof of their monthly money transfers, further confusing the investigation and guaranteeing themselves a few more months of stay.
“All this translates into a great breach of the effective judicial protection of my client,” comments Judith Silveira. For Premiá’s neighbor it will be one more forced pause in her life, another one she has been taking since March 2020. In fact, she already had to spend the confinement of the first wave at a neighbor’s house, Well, he had nowhere to go.
Reasonable doubt
The lawyer Silveira has already intervened in a hundred occupation cases, “but I had not seen this trick yet,” she says. She is not even despite operating in a judicial district where home occupation has grown to the point that the Mataró Bar Association has been asking for changes in the legislative arsenal against the phenomenon since September. Among them, more police proactivity and that neighborhood communities are recognized as passively entitled to report encroachments.
On the Catalan coast, the growth of illegal occupation may be related to the end of cheap rental contracts in Barcelona “that are not renewed, and leave the tenant searching without any possibility a similar house,” explains Silveira.
Is not always that way. On the coast of Malaga, specifically in the Rincón de la Victoria area, the National Police and the Civil Guard have revealed another reason for the increase in occupations: marijuana. Since June iI was investigating a couple of brothers who were the promoters of all the kicking in the doors of 2020 in the area, who gave up the usurped apartments. in exchange for the occupant – apparently needy people, relatives or friends of the brothers – to cultivate and care for plantations. Operation Gentlemen – for the Police – or Bañador – for the Civil Guard – resulted in 23 arrests in November.
In Mataró, as in other parts of Spain, cases in which the occupant takes out insurance in favor of the home are becoming more and more frequent.. “They seek to create doubt in the judge, making him have to question how the accused is going to be a squatter if it turns out that he has insured the house.”ratify the dean of the Mataronense College, María Pastor-. The objective is to lengthen the process by discussing whether the occupation of the home is legitimate. Especially if someone can be in a house by written, verbal or precarious title.”
low cost insurance
Thus, the mafia instructs the occupant to tell the judge versions such as that a man told him that he was the owner, that he gave him the keys, that he charged him 2,000 euros as a deposit, that he assured him that he would bring him a contract to sign and that has not reappeared… but that in the meantime he has secured the home. And everything will be true, but also a lie.
The practice of ‘low cost’ insurance, according to sources from the Provincial Court of Madrid, It is documented for the first time in Gijón (Asturias), where the illegitimate occupant of a suburban house had insured the home for 30 euros in June 2019.
Now it could be even cheaper: in the ranking of the cheapest home insurance on the Kelisto portal (the one they used in the case of Gijón), Axa, Ase Grup and Catalana de Occidente compete with basic packages of between 116 and 176 euros per anus.
“They take advantage of the fact that they will not be asked to present the deed of the house to negotiate,” says Pastor. “The deed is not necessary, a description and measurement of the house on your part is enough, your data and the number of your current account,” explains a telephone operator from Catalana. “No writing is needed, a tenant can take out the insurance, for example,” they explain from Argente, the Valencian mediator of Axa. And the same from A Coruña the Ase Grup commercial, who has also responded to a round of calls from this newspaper.
Lots of entries
The same thing happens with the alarms, which the squatters “advised by mafias,” says the dean of Mataró, have learned to hire to try to demonstrate with company receipts that they have a false right to housing; No company asks for a property title, “nor can it ask for one,” he clarifies. Jorge C., former salesman for a leading private security company and now dedicated to the “unemployment” business in Madrid.
Payment receipts domiciled in the occupied house increasingly appear in lawsuits for usurpation, not only in Catalonia. In fact, two years ago the trick of the accumulation of Carrefour shipping tickets for online purchases giving the usurped home as domicile.
Or what they plan to usurp. In Mataró “they even begin to order purchases in advance of the occupation. They do it through Amazon, for example. Or They ask for food from a ‘rider’, they wait in the doorway of the apartment that is their objective and that they have not yet occupied and they pick it up,” explains Silveira. Thus, if a neighbor indicates a date from which he saw the house occupied, he can show papers to maintain that he was there long before.
That already implies premeditation. At this rate, the mafias that facilitate by occupying the kick in the door – “kick flats”, they call them in the advertisements by words – and new keys for between 1,500 and 3,000 euros, “They will also end up charging for a package of tickets with which you can try to demonstrate that you have been living in the house for a long time,” explains Jorge C.
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This prior intelligence work is also beginning to be seen on the Catalan coast. Three apparently unrelated cases of squatters whose false landlord had requested information from the Property Registry are being investigated in the courts of Mataró. “For between two and seven euros they get a simple note from the house they are hanging aroundl. They tell the Registry that they have a commercial interest; They actually seek to know if the home belongs to a financial institution,” explains Silveira.
If it is, the complaint for usurpation will take much longer to occur. That is why occupations of seized properties are more abundant than those that have a private owner. Once the ownership has been verified, the occupation mafia will leave a sign next to the door, or the doorbell of the intercom, which will indicate clear way for The next step is to break down the door and change the lock, which will be given by another member of the group.
