They report the suicide of an evicted woman in L'Hospitalet: "It is not an inevitable tragedy"

BarcelonaA 54-year-old woman, a resident of the Santa Eulàlia neighborhood in L'Hospitalet de Llobregat, has committed suicide five months after being evicted from her home. This Monday, organizations and residents of the city publicly denounced the suicide of Olga on September 7th, five months after losing her home despite suffering from diagnosed mental health problems. She was 54 years old and had two daughters, one of whom is still a minor, and the night before the eviction she had already expressed that she was considering taking her own life. "We do not accept that Olga's case be presented as an inevitable tragedy without anyone responsible," stated Pau Segura, spokesperson for Habitatge l'Hospitalet.

The woman had bought an apartment on Comerç Street about twenty years ago and had taken out a mortgage with Banc Sabadell. After separating, she did not receive child support for her daughters, became unemployed, and could no longer afford the payments, as explained this Monday by the spokesperson for the Som Santa Eulàlia Neighborhood Association, Cristian Jiménez. As he detailed, Olga's lawyer requested that the eviction be halted, but the judge decided to proceed and opened a file against the lawyer because he considered that "the request to suspend the eviction due to the woman's health situation was not sufficiently proven."

The neighborhood organizations have criticized the "institutional abandonment" that Olga suffered and have demanded an investigation into the "chain of omissions" that they claim preceded her death and that responsibilities be established. Jiménez also explained that the woman had reached an agreement with the bank for the entity to keep the apartment and for her to continue living there in exchange for social rent. The agreement was maintained until the property was bought by Promontoria Coliseum Real Estate, an investment fund which, as Jiménez added, has participation from Banc Sabadell. Shortly after the acquisition, the eviction began.

Eviction moratorium

Union sources explained that the first eviction attempt was avoided because Olga was in contact with the Hospitalet Housing Union. However, the procedure was reactivated after Congress, with the votes of the PP, Vox, and Junts, rejected the moratorium on evictions that had until then frozen the evictions of vulnerable people. In parallel, Jiménez has criticized the operation of social services in Hospitalet: she reported that professionals "are overwhelmed" and that the resource available in the city does not provide a response to the number of people who need to be attended to. In this sense, she regretted that there is no emergency table as such.

The entities of Hospitalet have explained that Olga got in touch with the media, the Ombudsman, and different political parties to try to find a way out of the situation she was suffering. In fact, she even attended a study commission on mental health at the Parliament. The Housing Union and the Santa Eulàlia Neighborhood Association have called a protest act on October 3rd, at 7 PM, at the city's Plaça Pius XII.