“It was like a concentration camp”: the battle of the residents of the El Portús campsite in opposition to their eviction | Economy | EUROtoday

Collin and Margaret Stewart, a British retired couple, purchased a home within the Portús campsite in Cartagena (Murcia, 220,000 inhabitants) in 1989 and moved there completely in 2000. The author Eugenia Rico present in that very same place in 2006 what she thought of to be the perfect home to hold out her work: she invested 125,000 euros, registered and established his everlasting residence there. José Juan Leal and Miguel Almagro, who had been spending their summers within the space for years, additionally situated their residence there in 2020. But everybody has seen their non-public paradise became hell: in August 2023, the complicated modified homeowners and the brand new administration firm, Taiga, has determined to not renew their keep contracts.

The households, the corporate alleges, personal the homes, however not the plots on which they’re situated, which legally can’t be occupied completely, and are pressured to desert them. For the homeowners, actual property harassment, gentrification and financial pursuits are behind this expulsion, which they’ve been going through for 2 years.

The campsite is situated in a privileged atmosphere, on the seaside and within the protected pure area of the Sierra de La Muela, Cabo Tiñoso and Roldán, throughout the Natura 2000 Network. Opened within the eighties as a naturist area (it stopped being so when it modified homeowners), it has a tenting space for motorhomes subsequent to the Cala Morena seaside, and one other uphill with cellular properties, the place the protagonists of those tales. Some have remained for many years on the identical plots, they’ve been purchased, offered, rented and even inherited, and their homeowners have been including fastened constructions, anchored to the bottom, work components, enclosures and extensions which have given rise to the present panorama: a form of city in the course of nature. Today, the author Eugenia Rico insists, they aren’t cellular properties, as a result of they’re anchored to the bottom by these building components, and by no means might they alter their location.

For this motive, each she and the remainder of the long-stay residents, about 170 when the change of possession of the campsite occurred in response to the information offered by the corporate itself, obtained with astonishment in November 2023 a notification from the corporate. He introduced to them that he wouldn’t renew their keep contracts, in order that they must go away the plots free once they expired.

These contracts had been signed yearly by the homeowners to occupy a plot and use the electrical energy and water provides. The doc, to which EL PAÍS has had entry, specifies that the residents didn’t have “any right over the plot” and that, in the event that they wished to resume the keep, it could not essentially be in the identical location. The newspaper has additionally had entry to a number of gross sales contracts for the homes, that are numerous. In some they’re known as “mobile homes“, while others determine that the buyer acquires both the house and the plot. In all cases, these are contracts, not deeds. As Rico explains, in practice plot changes never occurred, basically because it was not possible to move the houses. Their version is corroborated by José Juan Leal and Miguel Almagro, who bought their home from another user of the campsite, remaining on the same plot that he had been occupying for decades.

However, the company continued to urge people to leave the facilities when their stay contracts expired. In July 2024 there were no longer any in place and residents were informed that the complex was going to close for a comprehensive renovation. The works, the company insists, were incompatible with residence within the premises, so a solution was negotiated individually for each resident. Some, the same sources point out, took their mobile homesothers sold them, there were those who left them at the campsite and those who received a financial amount to cover the dismantling costs. About twenty owners refused to leave and on October 1, 2024 the campsite closed and the works began and, with them, what these residents consider a true ordeal, marked by constant pressure and coercion from the company to leave the place that continues to this day.

The most extreme measure that the company took, Rico points out, took place on January 9, 2025: she and other owners like Leal and Almagro had left the campsite that day and, when they returned, they were not allowed access to their homes. The writer managed to obtain authorization from the courts to leave and enter her home; his companions, no. They did not set foot in their home again until July 25, when the campsite reopened to the public, now renovated. The company insists that the measure was announced and based on the users’ own safety, although it recognizes that four families remained inside the facilities throughout the period, among them, the British retirees and the writer.

They did it, she says, under harsh conditions of coercion: there were fences closed with padlocks surrounding the houses and to leave or enter they had to wait for the security guards to open the door, who followed them in all their movements. Access was only allowed on foot, and not by car. No family, friends or technical services were allowed to enter. High power spotlights were installed. There were continuous water and electricity outages. With his mobile phone he has recorded dozens of videos to witness these situations. “It was like being in a concentration camp,” he summarizes. He has filed round twenty complaints in courtroom for coercion and yet one more after struggling an accident, however all of them have been filed.

Leal and Almagro also report the same situation of harassment, and so did Collin and Margaret, who at the beginning of October released a video in which they lamented that “all this discomfort, suffering and fight for our rights would not have happened if the Administrations had faced their responsibilities and applied the laws.” They, like other residents, were registered at the campsite, even though it is located in a non-developable area and Spanish legislation does not allow residence in this type of facility. The Cartagena City Council has not responded to this newspaper’s requests for information.

Just a few days after recording that video, on October 4, Margaret was found dead in her home in what appears to be a case of suicide. For Eugenia Rico, the pressure and coercion got the better of this couple of octogenarians and she considers that the eviction ordered by the campsite is a clear case of gentrification: “The purpose is to expel middle-class households, who’ve been on this place for many years, to construct a luxurious complicated, in a privileged atmosphere, with a semi-private cove, wherein excessive costs are paid for very quick stays,” she emphasizes.

For the management of the complex, however, the measure has nothing to do with real estate harassment, but is a mere adaptation to the law, since the regulations that regulate campsites in the Region of Murcia, decree 193/2022, which modified the previous law, from 1985, expressly prohibits permanent residence in campsites. In its article 9.3, the decree states that “the keep within the institutions will all the time be non permanent, and can’t be longer than 12 months” and contemplates that users can return to settle “as soon as a full month has handed because the extinction of the earlier reservation.” The same article details that users cannot place “fixed elements that do not correspond to the temporary stay”, such as floors, fences, closures or construction elements. Furthermore, article 39 specifies that the “fixed elements of accommodation”, which include the mobile homeprefabricated houses or bungalows, “may not be property of the users.” “With this law in hand, the situation that existed until now is completely illegal,” underlines a spokesperson.

Of the 20 owners who have refused to abandon their homes, half a dozen are permanently residing in the campsite today and have initiated legal action to be declared “full owners of the homes.” The campsite, for its part, has filed eviction demands. In the complex, meanwhile, tourists enter and leave with their motorhomes, stroll along the beach and take bicycle routes, oblivious to the struggle of the permanent residents.