“We discovered that we are poor without knowing it,” says Richard Rodríguez, who was born in Valencia 50 years ago. Before the 2008 crisis, Rodríguez worked as an intercultural mediator (mediating conflicts between cultures and nationalities in neighborhoods) for the Madrid City Council. But the crisis took away their jobs, him and his wife, and they could no longer pay their rent in Vallecas. Since 2015, the family has lived in a bank apartment in the Villaverde district, which was empty after another family was the victim of foreclosures. “You live in fear, secretly, hidden… If you hear a siren in the distance, you think they’re coming to throw you out of the house,” he explains. They have asked the bank to sort out their situation, a social rent, the purchase of this precarious house that is now their home. Vain.
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Rodríguez’s case is one of those that Juan Diego Botto and his team used as inspiration for the film In the margins, which premiered in cinemas this Friday, with Penélope Cruz, Luis Tosar and Botto himself, who also directs and together with the journalist wrote the screenplay Olga Rodriguez. The film delves into the drama of precariousness, poverty and difficulties in accessing housing, which, as Botto says, are issues that are no longer new when they become a commonplace thing like this is happening. In 2021, according to the General Council of Justice (CGPJ), there were more than 100 evictions a day in Spain. However, humans are stubborn and have had a strong tendency not to sleep outdoors since the beginning of the species. The lack of a home is not like the lack of any other good, home is the foundation upon which existence is based and when that lack occurs everything else collapses
A preview of the film was held on September 28th at the Marcelino Camacho Auditorium of the Workers’ Commissions in central Madrid, in front of dozens of members of groups such as the Platform for People Affected by Mortgage or the Madrid Housing Coordinator. “The film was screened at the Venice and San Sebastian festivals, but for us this is the most important screening,” said the director. In that audience were the people, in whose homes, in their families, in their gatherings, in whose activism the filmmakers had deepened, only to later come out with a script that reflected the reality of those affected. Still, true stories are stranger than fiction.
When the world falls on you
“Penélope Cruz came to see me, we talked, she even got me to read her parts of the script,” says Angelines Díaz, 48, a camp girl (when she has a job). “I freaked out.” His problem began in 2012 when he could no longer pay the rent in social housing due to unemployment. Her husband worked in construction and the sector was paralyzed. “They sent me a letter saying I had to leave my house in a month… The world falls on you when you receive this letter, with a seven-year-old daughter and a two-year-old daughter,” he says. She attended the apartment meetings and became an activist there. Shown in the film with cameos of those truly affected, the collectives and living communities are not only a way to seek solutions, but also provide emotional support when everything falls apart.
“We are a family, if we see someone badly, we support them,” says Díaz. These organizations are machines to turn those affected into activists. There are men in it, but mostly women: the film focuses on the character of these fighting women. Díaz is still at home after years of struggle, meetings and confinement: he has received a rent that he can pay. “Of course I owe 32,000 euros for the house and a 9,000-euro fine for eviction incidents thanks to the gag law,” he says.
Juan Diego Botto poses with those affected and housing activists at the preview of “In the Margins”. Alvaro Garcia
Vanesa Fernández, 43, a shop assistant, domestic worker and practitioner of many others, especially black women, once attempted suicide. In 2013, he had access to an apartment of the Social Housing Agency (AVS) of the Autonomous Community of Madrid for people under 35 years old (at that time the AVS was called IVIMA). But shortly thereafter, this house in Madrid’s Las Suertes district was sold to investment fund Encasa Cibeles, majority-owned by Goldman Sachs. This year, the Autonomous Community of Madrid, chaired by Ignacio González, sold nearly 3,000 homes to the aforementioned fund. And his rent started to increase, from 140 to 409 euros, an amount that many could not afford.
In this situation, any unexpected expense was a stumbling block and it is difficult to pay for energy, water and food. “I wasn’t kicked out, but I received a lot of threats, they called me, a social worker came and invited me to go, they told me they weren’t an NGO, and I saw my neighbors getting kicked out,” says Fernández “So until the pressure got on me, I was very afraid of an eviction and preferred to go with my two children.” The victims left their apartment more gently.The new owners left the stairwell of the Fernández building without lights, without a TV antenna and the elevator unusable. “They wanted to make life impossible for us,” says the victim.
The whole process, along with pregnancy and childbirth, created a depression. Then she went from house to house, she tried to squat in a bank building but she didn’t succeed, the door was very strong and she didn’t know much about this discipline. “Sometimes you have to make radical decisions in order to survive,” explains Fernández, “but you have to know everything.” Until she ended up on the street, where her daughter’s father picked her up. In 2018, she had to put her son in a school due to economic problems because the situation in his studies harmed him. “It hit me twice already, the fact that my family was separated, and in December I couldn’t take it anymore: I tried to kill myself and ended up in a psychiatric hospital for eight days,” says Fernández. “I didn’t own my mind.” Now he lives in an apartment owned by an organization that fights for the right to housing.
A member of the mortgage victims platform is detained by police after entering Bankia headquarters Daniel Ochoa De Olza (AP)
Social awareness goes down
The movement against evictions has gained strength and glory in the previous crisis and in the heat of the 15M movement, but while the problems remain and even worsen, it seems that the way of looking at them is different is. “The situation in the media has changed a lot,” says Rodríguez. “Previously, when people talked about the housing problem, they talked about evictions, speculation, banks, vulture funds; Now they only talk about the cast on TV to scare us. Those of us who squat are not criminals, we are mostly families without resources.” As they say, the housing movement is not at its best. “People don’t get involved like they used to,” says Diaz, “there’s less social awareness.”
The diagnoses and possible solutions of all those affected are the same: In Spain there is a lack of social housing, as can be seen in comparison with the neighboring countries, Sareb (the “Bad Bank”) is to give up more apartments for social rent, housing has become an object of speculation and no constitutional right, effective housing law is needed and to stop evictions etc. These groups fight for such things and turn the vernissage into a party with slogans, speeches and songs. “It’s a great recognition for us that this film will be released,” says Rodríguez. “I really enjoyed filming, except when I got my ninth eviction notice on set. I couldn’t stop crying, from shame, from helplessness.”
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