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Thousands protest to end evictions in Spain

 
Published on Feb 17, 2013
5:57 AM
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People stand next a banner, reading "Decent housing", at the end of a demonstration called by the Mortgage Victims' Platform (PAH) demanding "The right to decent housing, stop evictions, the retroactive payment in kind and social rents" from Popular's Party quarter to La Constitucion square in Malaga, southern Spain February 16, 2013. Spain's parliament agreed on Tuesday to debate reforms to tough mortgage laws, the focus of bitter protests in the country's economic crisis, after activists presented an petition with close to 1.5 million signatures. Public pressure on Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy to change mortgage rules has mounted as banks have repossessed 400,000 properties - most of them residential - since 2008 when a construction bubble burst and the unemployment rate spiraled up to 26 percent. Similar demonstrations were planned to take place on Saturday in several cities across Spain, according to the PAH. -- PHOTO: REUTERS

MADRID (AFP) - Thousands of people demonstrated in Spanish cities on Saturday pushing for a new law to end a wave of evictions of homeowners ruined by the economic crisis.

Several thousand marched yelling to the din of drums and horns in central Madrid, waving banners reading "Stop evictions" and yelling "We have no homes!" Similar protests were called in Barcelona and 50 other Spanish cities, the latest of months of demonstrations driven by anger at Spain's recession and the conservative government, which is imposing austere economic reforms.

Campaigners passed a rare milestone on Tuesday when the Spanish parliament agreed to debate a popular bill of measures to protect poor homeowners, backed by a petition that received more than 1.4 million signatures.

The organisation that brought that petition, the Platform for Mortgage Victims (PAH), called Saturday's nationwide protests to pressure lawmakers to follow through and vote it into law quickly. "I think it will pass, and it will not be thanks to the politicians but to pressure from citizens in the street," said one demonstrator in Madrid, Enrique Valdivieso, 27, holding up one end of a banner reading "Government resign".

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