Spain’s Housing Crisis: Banks, Scams And Evictions

As banks in Spain continue to evict people who could not deliver on their mortgage payments in the midst of the COVID-19 crisis, redfish obtained exclusive access to Enric Duran, the Catalan Robin Hood of the Banks, who took nearly half a million Euros in loans from Spanish banks in 2008, redistributed them to anti-capitalist cooperatives and institutions instead of paying them back, and has been in hiding for almost a decade. One in five people live under the poverty line in Spain, and 29,406 evictions took place in 2020 while people struggled to make ends meet as COVID took over their lives. Simultaneously, 3.4 million apartments remain empty in Spain, which are often owned by banks and investment funds. Our team investigated how following the 2008 economic crisis in Spain, banks robbed people to the level that the long-lasting consequences of the crisis have become a permanent reality. An eviction plague is being felt by some of the most disadvantaged communities today.