Tenants face eviction in Torremolinos as court investigates landlady suspected of defrauding them

Rubén and Yolanda are two of the victims of an eviction notice who have been renting flats in a residential block in the El Calvario neighbourhood in Torremolinos for years. If the court proceedings do not take a different turn, they will have to leave their homes on 1 July. They are impotent participants in a devilish situation - a foreclosure process, which derives from the debts of the developer behind the construction of their building.

According to the Torremolinos court, the company in question sublet the flats in order to obstruct the collection of the debts it had generated. This makes the contracts of the tenants, among whom are Yolanda and Rubén, invalid.

The flats have been auctioned so that the developer could get enough money to pay off their debt. There are 39 properties, of which 29 are in the hands of Spain's state-backed asset management organisation (Sareb) and 10 in the hands of private individuals. Rubén and Yolanda occupy two flats of the latter group. After the bidding, they went in the hands of a woman who was in charge of one of the companies with which they had signed the rental agreements that were considered invalid.

It is a paradox that generates suspicion. As sources from the National Police and the High Court of Justice of Andalucía (TSJA) confirm, there are open proceedings, following complaints issued by some of the residents. A court Torremolinos is working to determine whether there is a crime of fraud, with the residents as victims. Depending on the findings of this initial phase of the investigation, further offences could be brought against those responsible for the companies with which the developer had struck the rental agreements.

Faced with the eviction notice, in the middle of the high season of housing demands exacerbated by the large volume of tourists in Torremolinos, Rubén and Yolanda, as well as their neighbours have few alternatives. Even before learning the date of her eviction, Yolanda started a hunger strike in order to draw attention to the helplessness in which she finds herself. She wanted to make it clear that the woman who had signed an illegal rental agreement with her had later been able to buy her home, leaving Yolanda on the street.

As for the 29 residents who live in the properties managed by Sareb, the possibility of social renting is being negotiated, based on the vulnerability reports drawn up by the town hall. A group of these tenants are represented by the Ruiz Rey law firm, which is confident that, in the end, a beneficial solution will be found.

Agreements have also been reached between private owners and the people living in the properties that have changed hands, in order to facilitate the signing of rental contracts, thereby avoiding likely evictions.

However, neither Yolanda nor Rubén have benefited from this process.

"The most serious part of all this is that we received the eviction notice, but never the official court document," said Rubén. His complaints are echoed by other residents of the El Calvario block, who demanded that the whole foreclosure procedure be halted. They stated that they were not informed about the court order, dated 8 January 2024, which gives rise to all the subsequent proceedings.

"We are in a Kafkaesque situation - a month away from having to leave our home, in a municipality where the cheapest thing you can find is a thousand euros and, moreover, in the high tourist season," he said.

As they are not mortgagors, they are also unable to take advantage of ways of staying in their homes. "We are in a grey area, which is detrimental to us", stated Rubén, adding that "the rope snaps at its weakest point" and that, until everything blows up in a few years' time, the residents will be the most affected.