It looks like a neighborhood meeting in the doorway, but it is not.
It is a very special visit.
The conversation is friendly, but its content is not: in reality, two strangers, a man and a woman, are communicating to some of the residents of the property, with all the kindness of which they are capable, that the best they can do It is accepting what they are going to tell you and looking for a home somewhere else.
The scene takes place at number 7 Tribulete Street, in Lavapiés.
It is 9:45 a.m. on February 2.
María José speaks.
—We introduce ourselves: I am a social worker and this is my partner Luis.
— I am Luis, representative of Elix.
—I am going to be responsible for accompanying the families and we wanted to talk to each of you if possible and at least provide information...
There will be a moment when Luis will raise the tone of his speech because he notices that the neighbors are skeptical.
—Here they are selling you the hype that we are going to arrive with a saw and a knife to throw people out of their homes and that is a lie.
They are being notified that the contracts will not be renewed.
To these words, one of the neighbors has his response: “That is throwing people out of their house.”
The conversation is part of a recording that EL PAÍS has had access to in which you can hear how two representatives of the real estate company Elix Rental Housing try to convince the residents of a building in Lavapiés that their best option is to get out of their homes. houses in which they live for rent, some for more than 40 years, before they are kicked out.
This will be the next step for the company to take over the block of 54 homes and a strategy that dozens of investment funds in the capital have followed.
Approach the neighbors and offer them, individually, a handful of euros in exchange for them leaving.
Sources from the company have acknowledged to this newspaper that this conversation took place because, due to "media noise", the company made the decision to present itself to the neighbors "as interested in purchasing the building" and "seek agreed solutions that take into account “The specific situation of each tenant takes into account.”
“During Elix's more than 20 years of experience in these types of situations, the needs of each tenant have always been taken into account and financial contributions have been made when it made sense as a measure to find solutions that satisfy all parties involved,” have pointed.
Then, as has happened in other blocks that Elix has acquired, they will renovate the building, make luxury homes and put on the rental market those same homes that Antolín, José, Luis or Blanca live in today, at double (at least) the price. Actual Price.
The company explains what the next step is for them: “On many occasions the renovations have been carried out with tenants inside, that is, without the need for them to leave their homes.
On other occasions, tenants have been helped to look for similar homes.”
They have not answered if there is any way to ensure that they can continue living there after the renovation.
The residents of the block on Calle del Tribulete, 7, in the Lavapiés neighborhood (Madrid), face the cancellation of their contract after the promise to purchase Elix.Juan José Martínez
This real estate fund, which seeks to acquire two other blocks in Madrid (one more in Tetuán and another in Ciudad Lineal) is owned by AltamarCAM Partners, whose president is Claudio Aguirre, cousin of the former regional president Esperanza Aguirre.
A few months ago, he sent his letter of introduction to about 50 residents of 22 Galileo Street, in Chamberí: a burofax that warned them that their contract had an expiration date.
But now he has changed his method.
And instead of a burofax, send two people willing to teach a lesson in kindness.
It is possible that the situation in the property on 7 Tribulete Street, in the heart of the Lavapiés neighborhood, is going to be complicated.
This building has become a trench against real estate speculation and abusive rents.
When they learned from the press that the company planned to acquire the block, they began to organize.
They had closely followed the fate of other residents of the neighborhood and other areas of Madrid, such as those on Galileo Street.
They held assemblies, called the Tenants' Union and stood up.
They have been preparing for weeks.
It was then, on Friday, February 2, when “the enemy” rang the doorbell.
Jose Santamaría and Blanca Andreu, former tenants of the Tribulete block, 7. Juan José Martínez
And this “enemy” uses other types of mediators.
They are no longer men in suits.
Now they are people who have cut their teeth in social movements for the right to housing, who have stopped evictions, that is, who have been on the other side before.
This is the case of María José, who presents herself as a “social worker” and well versed in these causes — the company has confirmed to EL PAÍS that she works for them and that “she has a clear approach to finding the most appropriate option in each case.” ”—.
Although she arrives with the same objective: to clean the block of uncomfortable tenants.
When a neighbor warns that this is what they are looking for, she responds:
—You shouldn't use those terms.
Look, I have been living in Vallecas for 30 years with my parents, my grandmother was already there and the contract ran out and I had to leave.
You can't tell me the history of housing in Spain, because I've been living this for 40 years.
You can see what my trajectory is and my trajectory is not to enter as a girl who has just left college, who begins to give cheap pedagogy to the people around me, that's not it.
It's the system.
It's the system.
The visit of those from Elix that Friday sought to pave the way for a final acquisition that will be voted on this Tuesday, February 13, as explained in the recording.
“The purchase has not yet occurred.
We are carrying out the normal process of purchasing a building, where before deeding, the building is marked,” company sources confirm to EL PAÍS.
The company's representatives assured the neighbors that they had already paid a part of the total amount; in the recording they mention around 20% or 30%.
One of them makes it clearer:
—The only thing I'm telling you: if you can reach an agreement that may interest you and you yourselves can accept it, then hey, there the company will see to what extent it goes, to what extent it is profitable and to what extent all the people leave. that are involved in winning.
You can say: “Damn, my rent expires in six months and I can take, to put a figure, 10,000 euros to help me find another contract…”
— Yes, to go somewhere else and have them charge you more rent — a union member who joined the conversation later responded skeptically.
—Well, it's a help... —says the company representative.
Antolín Sánchez, first generation surrogate, with the portrait of his grandmother who inherited the rental contract from him.Juan José Martínez
In the conversation, the neighbors ask that the negotiation be done collectively, because they fear that they want to divide the neighbors, although the envoys insist that this way they will not get anything.
For its part, the company responds to this newspaper: “Our willingness to consider each case is total.
The circumstances of each tenant are specific and therefore often require individualized solutions.”
One of the mediators explained it to them that day:
—What we offer is an individual negotiation with each one to offer that help to people based on that person's situation and the current contract they have.
The risk of collective bargaining is that in the end neither one thing nor the other is achieved and that it ends up reaching a stalemate in which leaving that home is not so easy.
54 families live in the block built more than a century ago, four of them with old rents, a privilege for contracts signed between 1950 and 1985 that offers benefits such as a rent freeze or, with a minimal increase, the possibility of inheriting the contract. or the right to preferential purchase and rental.
Within this group is the couple Jose Santamaría, 71, and Blanca Andreu Roca, 65. They pay less than 300 euros in rent.
Santamaría has lived here since she was two years old, the wife since 1981, three years before she got married.
Over the years they have installed the bathroom, shower, floor and light, since the house did not have these services.
Others receive the minimum vital income, some are already paying more than 80% of their income in a rent of about 400 euros that they will not find in another apartment within the capital.
The mediators persist: they will have to leave anyway and empty-handed.
“You can't tell us that we are going out into the street with our asses in the air,” says an angry neighbor.
“No,” responds one of the intermediaries, “we are trying to prevent them from going out into the street with their asses in the air, which is why we want to sit down with you and talk.”
The next battle of this neighborhood crusade against the Elix fund will happen this Tuesday, February 13, when the signing is scheduled for the capital increase for the purchase of three blocks in Madrid, including Tribulete, 7. The neighbors have prepared that day a mobilization from Lavapiés to the Elix offices on Serrano Street, 51, in the heart of the Salamanca neighborhood.
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