Yolanda V. Vitorian A. died on 15 May when he was in bed in the center that the City Hall of Vitoria-Gasteiz had prepared for evictions on the fronton of Lakua. The Vitoria-Gasteiz Initiative for the Right to Housing and Social Exclusion, made up of dozens of citizen movements and trade unions, said on Tuesday that it "shares the pain" of the deceased's family and friends.

The citizens' initiative has denounced and "regretted" the death that has occurred in the Biscayan municipality. The members of the center informed ARGIA that over the past few weeks Yolanda had been treated with inadequate medical care and that those in charge of the center had wanted to keep what had happened hidden. The initiative adheres to these complaints: “In the situation in which Yolanda died, no one should die. We want to denounce that governments hide deaths like last Wednesday’s.”

Structural problem

The initiative has denounced that in 2018, according to the administration, there were 325 people in Álava in a situation of “serious residential exclusion”. These statistics exclude migrants and refugees, or “those living in households that do not meet the minimum requirements”. In Vitoria-Gasteiz there were 54 people in the evictions that the City Hall opened during the lockdown on 8 May. In the ordinary pre-confinement resources there are a hundred vitorians. Finally, 20 minors live in the abandoned municipal dwellings of the Olarizu district, including 20 minors, without water or electricity, after the City Hall cut them before the winter. Exclusion is structural in our society, in the view of the initiative.

Adequate and dignified resources

Regarding the death of Lakua, the Anti-Exclusion Initiative emphasizes “the behavior of institutions that do not guarantee the right to housing”: “Is there no capacity to provide resources to more than 100 people in our territory so that they do not remain in the worst precariousness? Do Mr Gorka Uraran and Mr Ramiro González understand the auzolan?” The initiative has demanded that the City of Vitoria-Gasteiz and the Alavesa Provincial Council guarantee the right to housing and “offer dignified care to all people”.