An affected by the sentence that supports the sale of his home to a vulture background: “I took my dignity” | News from Madrid
María Jesús Almena, 54 years old, begins the energetic conversation: “The whole body trembles. I feel cheated.” And he ends up crying, worn after years of judicial struggle for his right to buy the public floor of the Madrid district of Carabanchel in which he has lived the rent since 2006 and that the Ana Botella government has sold to a vulture fund in 2013 for only 60,000 euros. She and other neighbors They embarked on a battle in the risky courts It is expensive with the hope that the courts give them the reason and recognize the preferential purchase right that includes the law in front of a third buyer. But this Thursday, The Supreme Court has eliminated this possibility. “I took my dignity … we lost everything,” he says on the other side of the phone.
In 2013, the Madrid City Council sold 1,860 public houses at the Blackstone Investment Fund to liquidity to the public coffers. A quick income in a moment of crisis. Tenants like María Jesús, who is a public employee, the news came to them with a letter, he promised that they would not have changed their conditions, but the truth is that their rent went up from 400 to 980 euros, something that can not be stuck for a salary of a meleurist like his.
Many have abandoned the houses, others have been evicted and others, like Almena, have decided to continue to deliver the rent to a court and undertake a legal way to have the opportunity to buy their home at the same price that Blackstone had made, which is known as the right of portrayal. Up to 41 residents of Carabanchel, four from the District Center and another hundred half of Ensan with Vallecas took the same road.
More than a decade of judicial defeats, but also of victories, such as that experienced by María Jesús herself and the rest of the tenants of Carabanchel in December 2021, when the provincial court of Madrid gave them the reason and told them that they could acquire their home for a price absolutely below the market. “I did not only believe it, that’s why I didn’t start looking for mortgages,” he recognized at that moment and recalled that Blackstone could still resort to the Supreme Court. In fact, he did it, and this Thursday he won the judicial battle.
At four in the afternoon, another of the affected neighbors sent to the WhatsApp group that share a link to a news. This is how they learned. Quickly, the chat was full of desolation. “Defeated, beaten, manipulated, abandoned … all those are the adjectives we have put on. In summary, we screwed our lives,” says this. María Jesús recognizes that the fall was more difficult after the Court herself gave the residents in Lope de Vega Street, which were in the same situation.
In this case, the Court considered that the conditions had been given to have that right of withdrawal. “After 12 years of struggle, spending money we didn’t have and that psychological and physical wear, which ends up in this way … the frustration and anger are enormous,” he admits. “On the other hand, we also have the right to rest, we have the calm of consciousness because we have fought to the end and you have to assume that you are small. Today I feel very insignificant,” he adds.
Al The lawyer Mariano Benítez de Lugo, who brings with this cause a decadeTHE The news surprised him to eat In a restaurant. “It is the saddest day in my 62 years of profession, not for having lost, but for the contempt for the supreme for the rights of the most vulnerable,” he said. The lawyer surprises the change of criteria with respect to the November sentence, in which the high court gave the tenants the reason and opened the doors to buy their homes in the heart of Madrid for 60,000 euros.
In this case, the bankrupt believed that the sale to Blackstone delle houses had been individual and not in bulk. “Surprise the change in the criteria when it comes to the same operation and the speaker himself – the same magistrate who writes the phrase.” The argument that US is contradictory compared to November and cannot be understood because there is no evidence to support it, “says the lawyer.
“As the Romans said: Authority is not the truthThat is, that the author’s authority is, but not the truth “, summarizes Benítez de Lugo, who states that he will study the sentence to see if there is any resource for the Constitutional.” I will keep my dignity until the last accusation that can be done, because we have nothing more to lose, “says Almena.
