Castellano | English

We, the residents of Don Pepe Apartments located in Sant Josep in Ibiza, have been living in a state of total stress for the last few days now, worried about if we will have to leave our homes and without any certainty as to what is going to happen next. Thanks to our protest mobilizations and the judicial process we started against the City Council of Sant Josep, they temporarily stopped the planned eviction, but we still don’t know when they will be back!

Not only that, but there are families who HAVE BEEN evicted from their homes for 1 YEAR, and they still don’t give us the license to do the maintenance work in our apartments.

Therefore we continue to fight and ask the City Council of Sant Josep that there will be no more temporary or ever evictions, to allow us to do maintenance work and live with dignity in our homes and to let the neighbors who have already been evicted return to their homes.

To put it in context, the evictions were taking place because the City Council considers that the building is in ruins. These pathologies however, are identified and are perfectly repairable and economically affordable. The amounts announced by the Consistory are not based on any real project with a budget.

These apartments host 100 families in 2 buildings located next to the Ibiza airport in the municipality of Sant Josep de Sa Talaia, Ibiza. They were built in 1964 and initially intended for Iberia pilots and they were their first tenants. Currently they host mostly working people, who reside all year round in Ibiza. The apartments are registered in the Property Register and over the years have been sold and bought, like any other property and the Town Hall has collected taxes such as IBI and garbage.

On the other hand, in 2001 the land on which the apartments are located was classified as Ses Salines Natural Park, although it had already been a Natural Reserve since 1995. That is long after Don Pepe Apartments were built and inhabited.

This situation of buildings in a Natural Park, has always made any request for the necessary maintenance work complicated. However, the Town Hall has granted authorization for specific works, such as soundproof windows and the installation of new doors in staircases.

For years the Resident Association has wanted to carry out repair works, not to enlarge or modify, just to keep the buildings in good condition. And for years, the City Council has been denying us this possibility.

Last year we were going to do the maintenance work. We had hired an Urbanistic Consultant who found us a legal way, although limited, because it was subject to interpretation.

And we decided to do it: we had a construction company, we had the money and a project and a technical team. The works were scheduled to begin in March 2020, but the pandemic arrived and everything came to a standstill.

Fall of a piece of vault and evictions

But on May 30, 2020, a piece of the roof in a house in Unit 1 fell; it was a few pieces of the flat part of some beams. The Fire Department came and did not see any danger, they did not evict! The insurance expert of the house, a builder who was going to repair the damage and the technical architect of the Community, did not see any danger. The first technicians of the Town Hall did not see any danger either, however, the Councilor of Urbanism (Angel Guerrero, currently Mayor of Sant Josep), sent other external technicians and decided that there was "imminent danger of collapse" (only by a visual inspection).

On June 04, 2020, 4 days after the incident, they evicted all the families from Unit 1 and three days later they started to underpin, drilling holes in all the houses with struts and stubs.

Twenty days later, the City Council evicted Unit 2, for the same reason of "imminent risk". In this case no drilling was performed, because the Community reacted effectively after the unexpected blow of Unit 1, took the matter to court.

The rest of us have not been evicted because we have started to make noise. That is why we ask the Council not to try eviction again and to rehouse the rest of the families that have already been evicted >>>>. 

Imagine what it is like to be living peacefully in your home; a house that has been standing for more than 60 years, which needs repairs, yes, but at no time has there been any sign of danger and then suddenly they take you out of there by force, giving you only 72 hours to retrieve your things. As a solution to your need for housing, they give you 2 months in an apart-hotel. You can't even take your pet with you! After 2 months, you are on your own! There are people who are paying the mortgage on their apartment in Don Pepe, where they can't live, and then they have to pay rent for an apartment!

Not to mention that in Ibiza the rents are exorbitant and the families who live in Don Pepe are mostly working people. This is our only home! Now there are people with depression, anxiety, and with a lot of stress, living and coping the best they can with this unexpected circumstance.

The other alternative that the City Council gives us is, a unilateral offer of 29,000€ per apartment to the owners of Block A, but still will evict the 3 Units that are left living there, within 72 hours and without judicial authorization.

If there is a political will, they can give us a real solution. What is not normal, is that they deny us to fix our homes! They have already let many families in the street, and they have not given them any option of rehousing. They want to throw us out of the whole building and give us only temporary alternatives of 2 months in an aparthotel or 29,000 euros for a house, which many of us are still paying mortgage on.

We are working people and we do not understand why the City Council of Sant Josep conDnues to leave us helpless.

We ask to relocate the evicted families from their homes and give us the license that will allow us to do the work and repairs in Don Pepe Apartments, OUR HOME.

Sign and share to ask the City Council. We are NOT going to let them do this to us >>>>