Horrendous housing

There are squatter settlements where the building work was not finished before the construction company went bankrupt, so the windows are made from cardboard and, when it rains and it is windy, you can imagine how it is for the inhabitants

Ignacio Lillo

Malaga

Friday, 17 November 2023, 14:56

Paraphrasing a replicant from Blade Runner, I can say for sure that I have seen houses that "you would not believe". Because of my job ... as a journalist, but also due to personal concerns, I have been in places which few would think were anything more than a mere roof over a head; not, at least, in this so-called first world.

Some months ago, purely by chance, I found myself on the roof of a modern, centrally located, three or four-storey building. The roof was originally divided into large storage rooms, I estimated around 10 or 12 square metres, with low-sloping roofs, and a metal fence around to mark the boundary of each plot.

Well, many of these cubicles have shut and repurposed as secret micro-dwellings, even with their own small air conditioning units, although I do not know how they solved the issue of a toilet (it surely does not have one).

This all came to mind after seeing an advert for a studio to rent somewhere in the city, a small attic that was difficult to live in because the space was so full of support beams that trying to move around must have been like playing Tetris.

When I think about these things I remember the time I was helping in the aftermath of a flood (yes, in Malaga there was a time not too long ago when it rained heavily and there was flooding) in the Los Asperones district.

After visiting several houses damaged by the flood, I found myself in front of a small structure, a little bigger than a dog kennel you find on farms. Fascinated by it, I thought that those four walls must have been some kind of storage room, when a very young girl looked at me and, seeing my frightened face, simply said: "Yes, I sleep in there".

I have many other examples of substandard housing where the ceilings were falling apart, but, in that case, it was either that or the street for the mother and her two young children.

There are squatter settlements where the building work was not finished before the construction company went bankrupt, so the windows are made from cardboard and, when it rains and it is windy, you can imagine how it is for the inhabitants.

In short, all this is just to say that you would not believe the extent of the human drama of homelessness in Malaga. Although I know that today, among the protests against the amnesty and the voting in of the prime minister, my humble reflection on something as mundane as the roof over people's heads "will be lost in time, like tears in the rain".

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