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Post by mekon on Sept 10, 2022 8:39:54 GMT
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Post by Diego the toe clipper on Sept 12, 2022 8:33:47 GMT
There is some truth to it, the law protects a person's home in a much more effective way than it protects their investment or holiday / 2nd home, so squatters do target places that are not the first homes of the owners.
The article seems quite sensationalist (it is) but it does also tell the truth in that the prime target of the squatters is property owned by the banks (repos from the last recession which the banks are sitting on without maintaining them). It makes sense, they are empty and nobody has any personal interest in them. In a lot of cases the neighbours don't even know that the new residents are squatters, in most cases they actually do the places up.
It is much less likely that a private owner is a victim though, but foreign owned places are next on the list, partly because the Brits are unlikely to have done the right paperwork and most don't speak enough Spanish to deal with teh situation correctly.
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Post by philthewindsurfer on Sept 12, 2022 9:45:01 GMT
The article seems quite sensationalist (it is) The headline is " Spanish squatter gangs invade homes of British expats" So you reckon gangs arent breaking in whilst the owner pops out for tapas? The standard of journalism is getting worse. Its all clickbait these days. That story comes from 'i' or little I as it is known. It started out as a tabloid featuring stories from other newspapers in a round-up, plus some of it's own. It used to be reasonable content. It was cheap to buy the paper version at first, thats why my mum used to buy it after ditching the Express. Then progressed to subscription only online, once they had gained a readership. So now MSN are just publishing their articles for free online. Its not just Spanish courts which are slow. The UK has a massive backlog of work after covid. |
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Post by Diego the toe clipper on Sept 12, 2022 20:27:47 GMT
The article seems quite sensationalist (it is) The headline is " Spanish squatter gangs invade homes of British expats" So you reckon gangs arent breaking in whilst the owner pops out for tapas? The standard of journalism is getting worse. Its all clickbait these days. That story comes from 'i' or little I as it is known. It started out as a tabloid featuring stories from other newspapers in a round-up, plus some of it's own. It used to be reasonable content. It was cheap to buy the paper version at first, thats why my mum used to buy it after ditching the Express. Then progressed to subscription only online, once they had gained a readership. So now MSN are just publishing their articles for free online. Its not just Spanish courts which are slow. The UK has a massive backlog of work after covid. It's not just my opinion. Recently a TV chat show tried to cash in on the growing fake news that the current laws are in favour of the squatters by inviting a judge onto their program. The judge was fom one of the areas which is supposedly worst affected. I guess the ideas was that being a judge, he'd be from the privately educated elite and would therefore back up the sensationalist claims and attacks on the government. The first thing he made clear was that the law hasn't changed for 15 years. The current right wing opposition are accusing the socialist government of making it legally difficult for owners to get squatters out of their homes, but the current legislation which is the object of criticism was actually created and passed by the current opposition. The hosts of the show didn't like the way things were going and tried to reel him in a bit and when pushed and it was suggested that people were coming home from a night out to find squatters in their houses, he said that he had only ever seen one case of that and that within a few hours they were out. I like to think I'm not totally looney left and if I'm honest I think that the current law is not ideal. It requires the owners to demonstrate that the house or flat is in use and is not abandoned. This can be difficult if the owners haven't declared the inheritance (to dodge the tax bill) or if the services are left in the names of previous owners etc. and that sometimes makes it difficult to get the squatters evicted quickly. This is why they usually target properties owned by banks, because the banks can't make use of the same legislation. But this squatting issue is certainly being used as a poltical pawn to generate fear and concern way beyond what the actual problem merits and it certainly isn't targetted against Brits specifically. |
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