María Jesús Almena, 54, begins the energetic conversation: “The whole body trembles. I feel cheated.” And he ends up crying, worn after years of judicial struggle for his right to buy the public floor of the Madrid district of Carabanchel in which he has lived rent since 2006 and that the Ana Botella government sold to a vulture fund in 2013 for just 60,000 euros. She and other neighbors and expensive hoping that the courts would give them their reason and recognize the preferential purchase right that includes the law in front of a third buyer. But this Thursday ,. “I have taken my dignity … We have lost everything,” he says on the other side of the phone.
In 2013, the Madrid City Council to the Blackstone Investment Fund to liquidity to public coffers. A rapid income at a time of crisis. Tenants like María Jesús, who is a public employee, the news came to them by a letter, promised that they were not going to change their conditions, but the truth is that their rent rose from 400 to 980 euros, something unassumable for a salary of a mileurist like his.
Many abandoned the houses, others were evicted, and others, such as Almena, decided to continue consigning their rent in a court and undertake a legal way to have the possibility of buying their home at the same price that Blackstone had done, which is known as a right of retracting. Up to 41 residents of Carabanchel, four of the Centro District and another half a hundred of the Ensanche de Vallecas took the same path.
More than a decade of judicial defeats, but also of victories, such as the one experienced by María Jesús herself and the rest of Carabanchel tenants in December 2021, when the Provincial Court of Madrid gave them the reason and told them that they could acquire their home for a price absolutely below the market. “I didn’t just believe it, that’s why I haven’t started looking for mortgages,” he acknowledged at that time and recalled that Blackstone could still resort to the Supreme Court. In fact, he did it, and this Thursday he has won the judicial battle.
At four in the afternoon, another of the affected neighbors has sent the WhatsApp group that they share a link to a news. This is how they have learned. Quickly, the chat has been filled with desolation. “Defeated, beaten, manipulated, abandoned … all those are the adjectives that we have been putting. In summary, we have screwed our lives,” says this affected. María Jesús acknowledges that the fall has been harder after the same court did give the residents on Lope de Vega street, who were in the same situation.
In that case, the court considered that the conditions were given to have that right of retracting. “After 12 years of struggle, to spend money that we did not have and that psychological and physical wear, that ends like this … frustration and rage are huge,” he admits. “On the other hand, we also have the right to rest, we have the conscience calm because we have fought until the end and you have to assume that you are little. Today I feel very insignificant,” he adds.
Al, in a restaurant. “It is the saddest day in my 62 years of profession, not for having lost, but for the contempt of the supreme to the rights of the most vulnerable,” he said. The lawyer surprises the change of criteria with respect to the November judgment, in which the High Court did give the tenants reason and opened the doors to buy their homes in the heart of Madrid for 60,000 euros.
In that case, the failed considered that the sale to Blackstone of the homes had been individual and not in block. “Surprise the change in criteria when it comes to the same operation and the same rapporteur – the same magistrate who writes the sentence.” The argument she uses is contradictory with respect to November and cannot be understood because there is no evidence to endorse it, “says the lawyer.
“As the Romans said: Authority is not the truththat is, that the author’s authority is, but not the truth, ”summarizes Benítez de Lugo, who says he will study the ruling to see if there is any resource to the Constitutional.“ I will maintain my dignity until the last allegation that can be done, because we no longer have anything to lose, ”says Almena.
