The ‘sticking’ of homes grew by 18% in Spain when 13,389 cases were recorded by September 2021, according to the latest data released by the Ministry of the Interior. Catalonia still leads the autonomous communities with 5,689 squats, 42% of the total, a figure that quadruples that of the Community of Madrid (1,282 cases) and almost triples that of Andalusia (1,994 cases).
The official statistics, consulted by Europa Press, confirm the upward trend of this phenomenon over the past year, which coincides with the September 2020 instructions issued by the Office of the Attorney General and the Ministry of Home Affairs to deal with both house invasions and usurpations.
Evolution since 2015
La shistorical erie It starts in 2015, when there were 10,376 illegal home occupations in Spain, 3,950 of them in Catalonia, that is, 38% of the total, four points less than today. In 2020, the last year with closed figures, this region had 6,647 cases, that is, it experienced an increase of 68% in five years.
Madrid added a total of in 2015 1 630 ‘occupations’, so it dropped 18% compared to the 2020 data, while Andalusia was responsible for 2,060 cases, so now it has 15.5% more. Across Spain, it goes from 10,376 cases to 14,792 (+ 42%) in five years.
Catalonia experiences a 9.1% increase in this type of behavior in the accumulated from January to September 2021, compared to 2020, a year marked by movement restrictions due to the COVID pandemic and which ended with 14,792 facts known by the State Security Forces and Bodies throughout Spain. Of these, 6,647 cases were concentrated in Catalonia last year (almost 45% of the total).
Within Catalonia, the data of the province of Barcelona stand out, the most populous of the four provinces, as it adds 4 229 squats between January and September this year, ie 74% of all facts known in this autonomous community.
Data by autonomies
If the accumulated figure for January-September 2021 is compared with that of 2020, the Madrid’s community suffers an increase of 24.8% in this type of crime, while Andalusia grows by 11.1%. Among the regions with the largest population, the Valencian Community also falls out, registering 968 squats compared to 706 between January-September 2020.
Castilla la Mancha is another of the regions with the most cases, responsible for 606 illegal occupations (+ 31.2%), followed by Murcia with 476 cases (+ 69.5%), the Balearic Islands with 407 (+73.9 %) and the Canary Islands with 406 (although 14.3% lower.
In Castile en Leon there are 239 cases (+ 62.6%), in Aragón 202 (+ 33.8%), as well as the Basque Country (+ 16.1%); Galicia registers 147 squats (+ 8.1%), Extremadura 116 (+ 46.8%) and Navarra 100 (+ 44.9%), and the rest are less than one hundred cases.
new instructions
On 17 September, after a summer of news about property occupations leading to a political debate, the Ministry of the Interior published an instruction with the ‘Action Protocol of the State Security Forces and Bodies in the illegal occupation of real property ‘to unite action criteria.
The Office of the Attorney General did the same in his instruction 1/2020 to expedite the precautions and facilitate the eviction when a crime of trespassing is committed.
Related news
The Ministry of the Interior has the “confusion and social alarm”, and related it to the differences between house invasion and usurpation: in the first cases it is intended that the Security Forces evict both first and second houses “without the need to request legal action, in the case of blatant crime, directly and immediately “, including the” identification of the occupants and their arrest if necessary “.
It specifically ordered the State Security Forces and Bodies to prepare more accurate reports that the immediate eviction and detention without the need to seek legal action in the event of a flagrant crime. From now on it was necessary to record forced doors and windows, coercion of the owner and neighbors or irregular consumption of electricity and water.
Reference-www.elperiodico.com