The Government has modified its own and now demands “violence and intimidation” in order to evict the squatters during the state of alarm. In this way, the Ministry of Consumer Affairs has changed article 1 bis of the regulations. The text establishes as a requirement to expel the usurpers that “the entry or stay in the property has occurred mediating intimidation or violence on people.” Until now, the regulations determined that the home should be evicted “when entering or staying in the property is the result of a crime.”
David Lucas, general secretary of the Urban Agenda and Housing of the Ministry of Transport, stresses to this newspaper that what the reform does is “empower the judge to consider whether or not to stop the launch after listening to the social services and only until when end the state of alarm”. Lucas emphasizes that “this has been done so that the judges can detect that there are vulnerable people in the house and do not stay on the street.” The general secretary of Agenda Urbana adds that “this is not done to protect any type of criminal activity.”
This change is reflected in the new Royal Decree-Law 1/2021, of January 19, on the protection of consumers and users in situations of social and economic vulnerability, published today by the Official State Gazette (BOE). The new text also establishes that it will be necessary for the launch to take place that “has taken place in a property owned by a natural or legal person who has it assigned by any valid title in law to a natural person who has his or her habitual residence or duly accredited second residence.
For the rest, the regulations on evictions maintain the same wording. The law does allow eviction when the squatting occurs in public housing. The law provides for the launch of these social housing “if the housing had already been assigned to an applicant by the administration or entity that manages said housing.”
Sources from the Ministry of Consumer Affairs assure that the norm regulates the figure of the vulnerable consumer and “reinforces” the protection of groups in a situation of “greatest defenselessness” in their consumer relations with companies. The Ministry maintains that the text “gives immediate coverage” to situations in which the eviction and release procedures affect economically vulnerable people with no alternative housing, even in criminal cases in which the release affects people who lack title to inhabit a house.
“It is integrated into community policies with a very broad notion of consumer rights,” says Garzón
The Minister of Consumption, Alberto Garzón, underlines that the royal decree-law is protected by article 51.1 of the Spanish Constitution and is “integrated” into the EU’s community policies under the protection of the New Consumer Agenda by the European Commission, which designs European consumer policies for the 2020-2025 period with a “very broad notion” of the rights of consumers and, “especially”, of the most vulnerable groups and is implemented for the first time in Spanish regulations through this “specific” figure.
In his opinion, it is about providing “adequate legal support” to public administrations so that they “promote” policies in defense of consumers and “particularly, with additional guarantees” for vulnerable consumers, a “broad” concept, which, according to Garzón, “expands beyond” the vulnerability linked to socioeconomic factors.
New legal figure
The minister defends that it is a tool called to be “very important” in the future, but that, in his opinion, “has a crucial importance from the present” and will allow the administrations to “correct” situations of “defenselessness”, which They have been “aggravated” in the last year by social isolation and mobility restrictions due to Covid-19, according to Consumption.
Through the modification of the General Law of Rights of Consumers and Users (Lgdcu), the royal decree-law develops the concept of vulnerable consumer as one who, in their consumer relations, is in a situation of disadvantage, lack of protection , helplessness or subordination to companies, even temporarily, territorially or by sector, due to their personal characteristics, needs or circumstances.
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