Spanish firefighters are refusing orders to participate in evictions because their duty is to “serve the public ” and intervene in “emergencies” and not to be “puppets of the bank or its servants in the government”.
Firefighters in Galicia, Catalonia and the Madrid region have rejected any action that “contributes to inequalities and miseries suffered by the working class,” said the CCOO union.
Galician fire crews “have proven to be on the side of social justice” by refusing to participate in the eviction of Aurelia Rey, an 85 year-old woman.
Some 200 protesters gathered to prevent the elderly lady’s eviction, which had been triggered because she had fallen behind on rent by one month. The action was organized by Stop Desahucios [Stop Evictions], a group formed to prevent thousands of evictions of those who have fallen behind on rent and mortgages due to austerity amid worsening economic conditions
The group succeeded in blocking police from forcefully throwing Aurelia Ray out of her property.
Last Saturday mass demonstrations against brutal repossession laws took place across Spain.
Current policy allows Spanish banks, which have been repeatedly bailed out by Spanish taxpayers and are line for a 100 billion euros EU bailout – that is from citizens across the EU – to repossess a home, while any remaining debt is still owed by the former owners.
More than 350,000 Spaniards have received eviction orders since 2008 because they were unable to pay their mortgages as a housing boom fuelled by the banks went bust.
Parliament has agreed to debate a citizens’ motion that would protect indebted homeowners from eviction and has also agreed to suspend foreclosures for two years.
However, the government has so far rejected permanent new legislation.
UPI ; El PublicoPhoto: Spain’s firefighter say: ‘We rescue people not banks’
Watching Corporate Europe
Evict the banks not the citizens.
Posted by baronjutter | February 21, 2013, 8:00 pmEvict the banks is exactly correct. Don’t let them get away with robbing the citizens twice. Make THEM pay.
Posted by Ferdinand | February 23, 2013, 5:45 pmCriminal minds were at work to try and use an artificially created housing bubble to take down any move toward more societal behavior by democratic governments. Look to CIA supported economic warfare. Why else are the bankers in the USA not being tried and jailed?
Posted by stephen | February 23, 2013, 8:11 amArtificial is right. Doesn’t take much to see that’s what happened.
The US is not so much the “land of opportunity” that the world, in the past, had thought we once were. Opportunities are no longer ours – the working class – being taken away by the “opportunistic”. The middle class is moving lower and lower. Sad to watch, harder to live through.
Posted by American_Firefighter | October 7, 2013, 1:13 am