In July 2017, the ESCR Commitee, issued a decision stating that Spain had violated the right to housing in a case of tenants' eviction. In its recommendations, the Committee urged Spain to:
- Promote legislative and / or administrative measures by which the judge can evaluate the consequences for tenants of the eviction procedure.
- Improve coordination between the judiciary and social services in order to prevent an evicted person from leaving his/her home without alternative housing.
- The evictions of vulnerable people should only take place after having consulted in a genuine and effective manner those affected by such a measure and to ensure that the state has taken all the necessary steps and use the maximum available resources to obtain a suitable alternative housing.
- Formulate and implement, in coordination with the regions, a plan to guarantee the right to housing for vulnerable people with the provision of resources, deadlines and evaluation of it.
After the OP-ICESCR came into force in 2013, the first decision of the ESCR Commitee against Spain for violation of the right to housing refered to a foreclosure procedure. The Spanish government did never answered the Committee at the time.
On this occasion, a number of civil society organisations active in the field of the right to housing have come together and created a monitoring group. The organizations are: Amnistía Internacional, Arquitectura Sin Fronteras (ASF), Centro de Asesoría y Estudios Sociales (CAES), Federación Europea de Asociaciones Nacionales que trabajan con Personas sin hogar – FEANTSA(represented by Cáritas Española), Federación de Asociaciones Vecinales de Barcelona (FAVB), Federación Regional de Asociaciones Vecinales de Madrid (FRAVM), Fundación del Consejo General de la Abogacía Española, Observatori DESC, Plataforma de Afectados por la Hipoteca (PAH) and Sindicato de Inquilinos.
The objective is to disseminate the information about the decision and to advocate for an adequate response by the Spanish Government to the CESCR's views.
Check hashtag: #EspañaIncumpleDESC #SpainResponse
Spanish Press coverage here
Update June 2018.
The response from the Spanish State after six months was insufficient, just one and a half pages focusing mainly on the measures addressed to mortgage lenders and how the monitoring group reacted accordingly in the following two months.
Apart from the follow up with the Committee the group is doing advocacy at a national level, there was an informative breakfast, they have written illuminating notes for the press to understand the process and, as a result of this, some progress has been made during the last months:
- A Commission in Parliament was created to follow up on the UN decisions. o Different than the Intergroup that is dedicated to the implementation of the recommendations from the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. The concluding observations of the Committee about Spain were published in March 2018 and included a request for an effective implementation of the MBD v Spain decision.
- The Ombudsman of Spain has opened an investigation into the violation of the right to housing
- A Motion was passed in the Spanish parliament declaring that they should use all means to implement the Decision of July 2017.
- At regional level Aragon and the Basque Country have supported the implementation of the decision.
The decision has also been used to request the suspension of the evictions in a number of cases and the CESCR in line with its own views, has provisionally suspended the eviction of a family and their two underage daughters in Madrid.
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