Spain Has Ghost Estates Too And Jobless Families Are Starting To Squat In Them

Empty town on Spain’s Camino.
Image: Flickr/Damian Corrigan

thejournal.ie. July 2014. Unable to pay her mortgage, Manoli Herrera turned over her flat to the bank and moved into one of six abandoned buildings occupied by other jobless families in Sanlucar de Barrameda, a seaside town on Spain´s southern coast.
“I did not want my two children to experience the violence of an eviction. They have already gone through so much,” she said as her children played in the courtyard of the occupied building.

Twenty struggling families, many with children, moved into the building on 30 June. Several days later another 60 families moved into five nearby buildings.
The six new buildings belong to a real estate developer that went bankrupt and disappeared.
A message written on a white bedsheet that hangs from the courtyard of one of the occupied reads: “Everyone has the right to a home. Fighting for a home.”