Poisoned Words. Eviction and a €270 Fine for Occupying an Investment Fund’s Apartment in Granada

Words are neither innocent nor guilty. Yet, being such powerful instruments, they should give pause to those who use them, prompting reflection on what they mean, the worldview they embody, and the residue they leave behind.

    One word can wound, just as another can heal. A voice can spark a conflict that a whisper can soothe.

   Can a father with no means and his son, who move into a dwelling (owned, let us say, by an investment fund) that has stood empty for years, simply be dismissed as “squatters” in the context of the housing emergency we are enduring, and can we then carry on as though nothing were amiss? What is more, can a journalist do so? And a public official?

   Is not a far more egregious form of squatting the unauthorised occupation of our streets and squares by terraces, outdoor dining areas, armchairs, chairs and stools, side tables, drinks coolers, pergolas, planters, parasols, appallingly tasteless advertising boards, lights, misting showers and all manner of other paraphernalia? These are public spaces where residents can no longer stroll freely, all so that a privileged few can profit from hordes of invading outsiders.

   To call someone “rich” (“the richest man in the world”) when all they possess is money, fame and greed—three weights that drag down a free life; to label as a “squatter” an evicted person eking out a miserable existence in a building owned by a multinational corporation that, out of sheer speculative calculation, has left it to fall into ruin; to refer to an abandoned, unaccompanied minor fleeing destitution as a “MENA” (unaccompanied foreign minor), an acronym bandied about without a shred of compassion; or, finally, to call a wretched human being a criminal or an illegal simply because, at the risk of their life, they have left everything behind to flee war, persecution or poverty—all of this is as cruel as it is servile towards the economic powers. These are the very forces that undermine democratic institutions and public authorities while never submitting themselves to the will of the people, yet seek to bend everyone's will to their own.

   They reject the taxes that fund scholarships, hospitals and public schools, but when times are hard, they are the first to demand and receive state aid—resources that belong to us all, yet which they hoard for themselves.

   Did the banks ever repay the fifty billion in public money they received in the wake of the 2008 crisis, as De Guindos promised they would?

   The thousands of homes they disposed of back then could now help alleviate, at least in part, the scourge of housing scarcity and, in the process, repay some of what they owe us all.

  Many of them rose to prominence under autocracies that remain very much alive in their shadowy track records, yet they accuse their opponents of despotism. They belong to political parties whose traditional hallmark has been an utter lack of transparency, yet they brand their adversaries corrupt. They have been staunchly illiberal and uncompromising censors, yet they slap the stigma of undermining freedom on any intervention by public authorities—even when it serves merely to arbitrate in order to reduce extreme inequalities. They have been warmongers; they have been antisemites...

   And yet they are skilled rhetoricians, wielding their sophistries against the unfortunate...

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