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Despite alarmist rhetoric, squatting is slowing down for the first time in seven years

The alarmist discussion about squatting is discredited by the latest crime statistics. According to the figures compiled by the Crime Statistics System, which reports to the Ministry of the Interior and collects information from the National Police, Civil Guard, regional police forces and local councils, the number of criminal offenses of this type registered in Spain in 2022 was 16,726, which represents a 3.2% decrease on the previous year, when the figure soared to 17,274, an all-time high.

This figure represents the first decline in a phenomenon that has steadily and dramatically increased under different governments since 2016 when 9,918 cases were recorded. These figures include both cases: of usurpation that involves breaking into empty flats owned by banks or investment funds, which are the vast majority, and squatting in the usual home or second residence of private individuals, which account for residual figures. A maximum of six months' imprisonment can be imposed for the first offense. The second offense is punishable by up to two years' imprisonment.

The general slowdown in the number of cases had already been anticipated by the Public Prosecutor's Office in its last annual report for 2021. Then, the Prosecutor's Office already highlighted that the cases of trespassing initiated this year (9,739) confirmed the stabilization trend started in 2020 and underlined that only nine more cases had been initiated in the period analyzed than in the previous year. As for home invasions, the most publicized and therefore the most worrying form of squatting, the figures of the Prosecutor's Office reflect their exceptional nature. In 2021, there were 83 indictments for this crime.

At the same time, the National Statistics Institute (INE) reports that in 2021 there were 230 convictions for breaking and entering in Spain, this figure includes all forms of this crime, not just squatting, a figure significantly lower than the peak in 2016, when there were 357 cases. Similar trends can be observed in the case of squatting, whose statistics show that it concentrates most of the problem: in 2021 there were 4,302 convictions, a figure much higher than the 1,669 in 2013 but still significantly lower than the 6,757 in 2017.

According to the available data, there has been a decrease in 12 communities, including three of the four most affected, which account for 78% of the total number of complaints. Catalonia leads, where by far the most complaints are filed, the figure fell from 7,345 in 2021 to 7,005 last year (4.7% less); in Andalusia, from 2,557 to 2,502 (2.2% less) and in Madrid, from 1,660 to 1,501 (almost 10% less). The Valencian Community is the only one with more than 1,000 complaints per year, where the figures have risen from 1,779 to 2,024 (an increase of 13.7%) in the last year.

Antonia Linde, director of the criminology program at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (Open University of Catalonia, UOC) and one of the leading experts on global crime trends, describes the drop in cases in 2022 currently shown in the Interior statistics as anecdotal and says that we will have to wait and see how it develops in the coming years. However, Linde points out that this may be the first symptom of the stagnation of a phenomenon that until now has not stopped growing. It is especially considering that the increase had been close to 17% between 2020 and 2021.

According to Linde, the reasons for this slowdown may be several, and she cites among them the social measures adopted by some city councils to combat squatting, or the dissuasive effect of the announcement by the Government of legal measures to speed up the procedures for evicting these properties and to tackle organized crime groups that found a lucrative business in this activity, as demonstrated by the investigation of the "Squatter case" following the liquidation of one of these mafias in Barcelona.

Carlos Morales, the spokesman for the Unified Police Union (SUP), points to another measure as a possible explanation for this reduction, a circular issued in September 2020 by Dolores Delgado, the then Attorney General of the State, in which she urged prosecutors to act with maximum speed against illegal squatting while the matter was being settled in the courts. 

"The Interior Ministry was prompted by this action to create a police action protocol shortly afterward, clarifying what officers should do in the face of this crime, as we have been requesting for a long time". 

Other police sources added that more recent police actions against organized groups who carry out these invasions with the intention of subsequently renting the property to third parties or even running so-called narco-apartments or brothels have also played a role.

According to Antonia Linde, the best legal remedy to tackle this issue is "judicial speed", and she considers other ideas put forward in recent months by some parties to be ineffective. She mentions in particular one that was supported by PP, Vox and Ciudadanos and rejected by Congress in October last year. It proposed a series of legislative changes to toughen penalties for squatters. The expert, who is also a member of the European Sourcebook of Crime and Criminal Justice Statistics, a group specializing in analyzing crime data, stresses that studies have shown that punitive populism, announcing harsher penalties, which politicians often resort to, does not work for this or other crimes.

Linde believes that the public feels uneasy about the phenomenon, which is of great social concern, and believes that other measures, such as the squatters' hotline, set up by the president of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, last summer, are also ineffective. In the expert's opinion, an initiative of this nature is not operational: "I wouldn't have made the call if it had happened to me. I would have reported it to the police". The 1,163 calls received by this telephone number in its first six months of operation, 42 of which came from outside the Community of Madrid, confirm this impression. Of these, only 6% were referred to the police.

 

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