[P2P-F] Fwd: ZNet Daily Commentary: Who Is Rescuing The Spanish People? By David Marty

Tue Jan 29 13:41:41 CET 2013

see end of article for activist platform

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Date: Tue, Jan 29, 2013 at 6:43 PM
Subject: ZNet Daily Commentary: Who Is Rescuing The Spanish People? By
David Marty
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Who Is Rescuing The Spanish People?

January 28, 2013 By *David Marty*

David Marty's ZSpace
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Whether its banks are rescued by the ECB or not, Spain will remain in
crisis. The situation is likely to become even worse under the ruling of
the current right wing government of Mariano Rajoy who seems unable to move
beyond the neoliberal political principles of the FAES (*principios
politicos fundación
FAES<http://email.zsustainers.org/wf/click?upn=xrLDuKs9E-2FW2gJyS-2BCwKW4b5UPhwF-2F3B-2BEmE5tavCUjiWAavOL9zajNzWGElLh-2BxdNqDGpFpxke7qwYQYViWBUy0kwrhLDV-2BlLG5SPn6EFU-3D_V-2FUUiW5KvBPNV-2FItFYsbuIFOqr58NacNTIV3-2FGcH-2BSDV9oWHhfEGmHsrXN6Yh6CORd1zweyzVLt8klbSmWnbnR87avEIHkXUlNL9UHz6AhbU8KTMUF9YoUuT3l-2BIo-2FnvXM0XgWUZUXqfhWPzOuJGjG4BG3sQZ4-2FvCIVS1vJPsgU-3D>
*), the right wing think tank of the “Partido Popular” chaired by José
María Aznar, former president of Spain from 1996 to 2004.

One New York Times headline of November, 15 2012 was “Spain: New Rules
Limit Evictions” in which the author correctly says that Spanish judges
have issued 350.000 evictions since the start of the crisis. This figure
means that between 1.5 and 2 million people have been evicted, which
represents about 3 – 4% of the total Spanish population.

Let’s see what this crisis means exactly for the Spanish population and
compare the different solutions offered by the government on one hand and
by citizens’ organizations on the other.

The Current Situation

Statistics

While I’m writing, more than 26% of the workforce is currently unemployed,
22% of Spanish households are living under the poverty threshold and 25% of
the population is threatened by social exclusion. There have been 350.000
evictions since the beginning of the crisis in 2007 and 532 foreclosures
are currently taking place per day. What these statistics fail to mention
are the terrible psychological effects of hopelessness on the people of
Spain, as many fear for the future and can see no solution to the crisis.

1909 Spanish Mortgage Law

It seems an old Spanish 1909 mortgage law gives financial companies the
right to kick a family out of its home and then demand the remaining debt.
It is probably quite difficult to understand if you are not familiar with
the Spanish legal system, so let me explain how it works.

When you find that you can no longer cover payments on your mortgage, your
first experience of the foreclosure process is to be contacted by a bank
employee (by phone if you are lucky or merely by answerphone message if
not) who will reprimand you for being a ‘delinquent debtor’. After a few
months to a year, when a judge finally decides how much you owe to the
bank, your house is sold by auction. However, the only party interested in
acquiring your house is the very same bank which, according to the 1909
Mortgage Law, will pay only 60% of its value.

So, can you imagine the consequences? Let me give you an example.

Imagine you owe €80.000 to the finance company. You can’t pay so a judge
decides to sell your house valued at €100.000 by auction. You might think,
“Fine, I can pay what I owe”. Wrong. The finance company will go to the
auction and will most probably pay only 60% of the value, i.e. €60.000.
This leaves €20.000 of unpaid debt and this is what *you* will have to pay *
plus* administrative expenses *plus* interest, so you may in fact end up
owing €40-50.000 to the finance company.

This is what has happened to 350.000 families since the beginning of the
crisis, and this is what more than one million people are currently facing
in Spain.

How the world sees it

On August, 10th 2012 the UN published a report entitled “on adequate
housing” (*On adequate
housing<http://email.zsustainers.org/wf/click?upn=xrLDuKs9E-2FW2gJyS-2BCwKW5BvcaJiaSUBdP6uf6QKoovNtjHEeupekY54e9PcR0AYXLK4DeQ3vh65q5fD8zNDw6dMvnb3Jhg6mC-2BjRjaizvg-3D_V-2FUUiW5KvBPNV-2FItFYsbuIFOqr58NacNTIV3-2FGcH-2BSDV9oWHhfEGmHsrXN6Yh6CORd1zweyzVLt8klbSmWnbnSyiKqMdLnEhKVZFwv8JxNXYPQu82U5CcxEaS1dFstjE8HLTtu0durXVEmOKnOZM84JoSKKjbIL7qq1fu9i-2FG0Y-3D>
*) by Mrs. *Raquel Rolnik*, UN Special Rapporteur. In this report, it is
interesting to see how she singles out Spain, amongst other countries such
as the US and Ireland, for having a particularly harsh housing policy.
Rolnik says that Spanish governments have never genuinely attempted to
reform the housing policy in favour of the population, in spite of article
47[1] <#13c863f30c41969d__ftn1> of the Spanish Constitution which
explicitly states that “all Spaniards have the right to enjoy decent and
adequate housing”. Instead, Spanish governments of both the right and the
left have always pursued a housing policy which favors the elites and the
financial and industrial corporations.

On November 8, 2012, the advocate general of the European Court of Justice,
Julianne Kokott, declared that “*the Spanish regulation is “incompatible”
with the European Directive 93/13 on unfair contract
terms*”.[2]<#13c863f30c41969d__ftn2>As of now, some judges have
announced they won't continue with the current
foreclosure cases until the Spanish legal system is reformed and made
compatible with the European consumer rights directive 93/13.

Morality and legitimacy

One wonders what kind of moral legitimacy a government has when it is
responsible for administering a system in which entire families including
old people, kids and disabled people are being kicked out of their homes
and plunged into unpayable debt. Should not a government provide for its
people? Should it not protect its citizens?

Article 47 of the 1978 Spanish Constitution was created to give the Spanish
people the right to enjoy decent and adequate housing. It echoes Article 25
of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which says, “*Everyone has the
right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of
himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical
care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event
of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of
livelihood in circumstances beyond his control*.”

Whatever ministers and politicians might say, clearly the Spanish
government has the power and the capacity to change the current housing
laws. Who, after all, is responsible for applying the Spanish Constitution?
Or, one wonders, is the Spanish Government actually proud of deliberately
contravening the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and its own
constitution?

What else is institutionally needed to stop this disaster?

Government versus citizens

On March 9, 2012, the current Minister of the Economy (and the 2006-2008
advisor for Lehman Brothers in Europe and director of its subsidiary bank
in Spain and Portugal), Luis De Guindos, launched a “Code of good practice”
appealing to the good will of the financial companies to stop evicting
people in the most precarious situations. Despite his presumably close
familiarity with the nature of financial corporations, De Guindos seems to
have rather overestimated their capacity for “good will” towards people of
flesh and blood. Surely it speaks volumes that, contrary to the “code of
good practice”, evictions actually *increased* from 517 to 532 per day
between March and November.

In November 2012, following the protests and complaints of citizens
organizations, police unions, judges and lawyers associations and the media
publication of several cases of suicides[3] <#13c863f30c41969d__ftn3>, the
government launched a second decree to stop evictions of (again) people in
the most precarious situations.[4] <#13c863f30c41969d__ftn4> However, what
Mariano Rajoy's government doesn't take into account in this decree is the *
large* *majority of the affected people*. Almost all people who have
suffered eviction can be said to be in a ‘precarious situation’, but their
situations are not deemed to be precarious enough to benefit from the
decree’s protection. For example, none of the suicides investigated by the
media were in ‘precarious’ enough situations to have taken recourse to this
decree.

What are the solutions needed?

Since 2007, a group of Barcelona citizens started the *Plataforma de
Personas Afectadas por la Hipoteca *(Platform for Mortgage Victims). In
2012, this organization spread all around the country. The purpose of this
platform is to help people with information, skills, confidence and support
make visible the situation in Spain and around the world. In the short
term, the aim is to ask the government to vote in a law to *stop evictions*,
to *eliminate any debt* once the house is handed over to the bank and to
establish a *social rent* according to incomes.

The existence of this platform has shown how important public pressure is
and how efficient it can be when people organize. All of the little changes
introduced by the government have happened as a result of public pressures.
The government of Mariano Rajoy seems unable to react constructively to the
crisis and the workable solutions that have been put forward have come from
grassroots organizations like the *Plataforma*. Hope only exists when you
have real alternatives that you know are possible to achieve. And that is
precisely what the Platform for Mortgage Victims is providing Spanish
people with: real short term ALTERNATIVES.

There's no other way to find a socially just solution to the housing
crisis: people must react to the crisis together and organize in order to
influence the political process. I've just shown you some ways in which
they have started to have success.

------------------------------

[1] <#13c863f30c41969d__ftnref1>Article 47 of the Spanish Constitution
states: "All Spaniards have the right to enjoy decent and adequate housing.
The public authorities shall promote the necessary conditions and establish
appropriate standards in order to make this right effective, regulating
land use in accordance with the general interest in order to prevent
speculation. The community shall have a share in the benefits accruing from
the town-planning policies of public bodies".

[2] <#13c863f30c41969d__ftnref2>http://*
www.murciatoday.com/pm-promises-change-after-another-spanish-eviction-suicide_13727-a.html
*

[3] <#13c863f30c41969d__ftnref3>
http://www.diariovasco.com/20121026/mas-actualidad/sociedad/nueve-personas-suicidan-cada-201210261241.html<http://email.zsustainers.org/wf/click?upn=xrLDuKs9E-2FW2gJyS-2BCwKW2kyHIkeMHdFOo4mXHVRMiCT3boJgsAACnRWdwXLqtsgtUap85VgXZNP6-2F2PwhPjPhYt0PWj84hzz0QvB4BbCGcgqOD8uRTXz5kgvcq-2Br6pkttibGczbZeXjLC247YZSugMG06FeNnJNIaGd4Wda20o-3D_V-2FUUiW5KvBPNV-2FItFYsbuIFOqr58NacNTIV3-2FGcH-2BSDV9oWHhfEGmHsrXN6Yh6CORd1zweyzVLt8klbSmWnbnb2m1HsuZuNOGKQz0ihygfKr5WzbyATQSqv6tlQP10YIH0J5jkiW2yuUxqEKtiHd76YKn9KQk4nBna2QLhVu59o-3D>this
article explains the conclusion of the Psychiatric National Congress
which took place in September 25th-28th  2012 in Bilbao. One third of the
suicides are caused directly by the crisis.

[4] <#13c863f30c41969d__ftnref4>
http://www.rte.ie/news/2012/1113/spain-suicide-evictions.html<http://email.zsustainers.org/wf/click?upn=xrLDuKs9E-2FW2gJyS-2BCwKWx-2B87qZYE-2FRmZknYUlG5OSfCr-2FSaP0EINSBQuWk0XbT9Av1-2BxNLKSIgOeEOXtQSI-2BXjmGMlXBB9pJKCjgWMClig-3D_V-2FUUiW5KvBPNV-2FItFYsbuIFOqr58NacNTIV3-2FGcH-2BSDV9oWHhfEGmHsrXN6Yh6CORd1zweyzVLt8klbSmWnbnT5M8boCP32UTiT1Uz20mIPVDbiI3wKpAEmc8Hvpihw6KkLbykUDXYVlcdGQXwHBsBm2aSqtPy5Y4hQlSTHJcDg-3D>
  ------------------------------

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