97-year-old grandmother mistakenly evicted: "They left nothing behind"

For seven years Rosario Bravo had been writing her memories by hand in a notebook given to her by Emiliano Caballero, her son. Every day she spent some time and wrote down personal anecdotes about the Civil War in her hometown, Santa Cruz de Mudela (Ciudad Real), her two years of marriage -her husband died in a work accident working for Renfe-, how the family got by on their own, how she emigrated to Hospitalet del Llobregat, and all kinds of headaches and joys that she has lived with family and friends for 97 years. "She had an entire life there", Emiliano summarizes.

Including other "priceless" items, such as the alliance rings of her brothers and brothers-in-law or photos of deceased relatives, the notebook was the first thing that Rosario missed when her children discovered that her mother had been evited by mistake and the police had emptied the flat, had changed the lock on the door, and had installed an alarm. "They have left almost nothing behind", says Emiliano, who complains that in the court's eviction proceedings in l'Hospitalet de Llobregat there is an error in the address subject to eviction: the flat on top of the first attic, where Rosario lives, instead of the first attic. In addition, he finds it "outrageous" that in the diligence it is assured, without seeing the house, that it was empty and that no one lived there.

Rosario's son explains that it was the neighbours who had to be evicted who warned them, and that they also called them to ask for forgiveness. "The man is a taxi driver, and with this crisis now they can't pay the rent and they feel guilty about what has happened to us", Emiliano says, who quickly contacted Finques Gual, the owner and administrator of the entire block of flats and the one next door. Despite the fact that Rosario has been paying rent for sixty years, the estate agent did not notify her of the eviction and, when asked about the personal belongings that the removal company took away, the estate agent refers to the proceedings and takes no further responsibility. "No one lifted a finger; if they had at least told us which company had taken the things and where they had left them, we could have found them. Now it's been eight days...", says Emiliano, who sees how time goes by and nothing is recovered.

Before meeting with Finques Gual, luckily, a representative of the real estate agency visited Rosario's flat with the family and was able to check everything that had been taken. "It could not have been us because we did not have the key to the new lock or knew the alarm code", Emiliano says, who explains that the real estate agent could see -and this can help them in court- that the microwave, crockery, clothes and many more things where missing, and these were valued, according to Rosario's lawyer, in between 22,000 and 24,000 euros in total.

Now, as she tries to recover everything that was taken from her - she prefers not to use the verb steal - Rosario lives with her children in Terrassa and still hopes to find the notebook where she wrote down all her memories. "It was quite thick, on the sides the pages are golden and she kept it in a cloth bag with a checkered pattern like the one on children's smocks when they go to school", explained Laura Caballero, Rosario's granddaughter, to Rac 1 radio station. "It's quite rococo, with golden rings and a size between DIN A3 and DIN A4, and on the first page her name can be read", adds Emiliano in the hope that someone will find it.