There is a lot of film footage that has been spent on ghosts , unwanted guests in houses and palaces and, sometimes, saviors of the life of the loved one as in Ghost or very nice cartoons like Casper. Other times, the ghosts are not really ghosts at all, and if not, let’s think of The Phantom of the Opera. Because sometimes things are easier to understand than they want us to believe.

In our theatre, in principle, there should not be ghosts, beyond those who are so in a figurative sense, a garden where God forbid I should get into. But there are some institutions, figures and crimes whose use, abuse or disuse can turn them into real ghosts. And that is what we are going to talk about today.

I confess that, as a prosecutor for ten years, I have never had squatting or, as it is called in law, property usurpation as one of my sources of anxiety. It is a crime that exists, like so many others, and that, in all honesty, has never provided alarming figures or results beyond the logical harm to the owner. That is why it is so striking why for a few years now, and especially when the holiday season approaches, the media inundate us with alarmist news about squatting.

I am aware that I am not the first to speak about this issue. Nor will I be the only one, I fear. There have been several members of the judiciary and other legal experts who have tried to explain that in the case of alleged squatters, not all that glitters is gold. The last one, if I remember correctly, to the astonishment of the interviewer who seemed to expect an answer in the opposite direction to the one he gave, downplaying it and denouncing unnecessary alarmism.

I don’t know if it’s just me, I’m sometimes suspicious , but it’s still curious that these news items are usually accompanied, more or less closely in time and space, by alarm announcements where the protagonists not only protect themselves from theft, as always, but they also seem more frightened by the possibility that when they return from buying bread a commune has been set up in their house.

And that is precisely where I wanted to get to. Throughout my life as a prosecutor, and in that of many other colleagues, we have seen something like this happen. I am not saying that it cannot happen, but it is highly unusual for the house where one lives to appear occupied after a temporary absence . And that does not mean that property usurpations do not exist. They do exist, but they are usually of properties that have been unoccupied since the dawn of time, often from banks from the times when the famous property bubble burst.

And the thing is that, deliberately or unconsciously, things are confused. The usurpation of property is not the same as breaking and entering. And when someone enters another person’s house, even if they are not there at the time, they commit this crime, which is much more serious than the previous one. And, as it is a flagrant crime, immediate eviction is carried out. And that’s it.

Why then do they insist that it takes years to get this eviction? Well, because of what I was saying, that they confuse apples with oranges, and the river is already in turmoil, as we know. Many people repeat ad nauseum that a squatter has moved into the house they inherited from their aunt Puri when, in reality, it is not such a thing, but rather, simply and plainly, a non-payment of rent. And mere non-payment is not a crime and has its own procedure for eviction. Evictions that, on the other hand, are numerically more frequent than squatting , and I dare say that they are socially more worrying, although each case is a world of its own.

But it looks great to jump on the bandwagon and show off your brother- in-lawism by telling anyone who will listen, including a television camera, that you know your brother’s mother-in-law’s cousin who is the victim of squatters who are destroying his house.

Finally, a couple of thoughts to bear in mind. First, in many of the cases that appear on television day in and day out, the indignant complainants – on television, not in court – are not the owners of the squatted property but the neighbours who do not like the squatters in the building next door. In many of these cases, the owner does not care or is not willing to start a process to evict them, because, if he did, he would have succeeded. I remember in one case a lady – to call her something – who said that it was a luxury development and that it lost a lot of cachet with the presence of that family. Just like that.

The second reflection is a question I ask myself a lot. Why is it that with other crimes there is an exquisite respect for the presumption of innocence and in this one nobody talks about alleged squatters? Why do those who in other cases claim that injustice in this case ignore it? I’ll leave it there too.

And that’s it for today’s premiere. I hope it has served to clarify terms and quiet alarms. The applause , however, will be dedicated to those who have already made strenuous efforts to explain that, in Law, not everything that glitters is gold. Because it is not always easy to distinguish it from the tinsel.

Susana Gisbert Grifo

https://conmitogaymistacones.com/2022/09/02/okupacion-delito-fantasma/

02/22/2023