According to a statement from the Portuguese Social Rights Office, private company Desokupa has been in the Left Margin for the past few days trying to evict a woman. As they have indicated, the owner of the property had already made a rental contract in black for the woman who wanted to dismiss, and now does not want to renew it. “Given this situation, the owner cannot sue because he is the offender, so he has resorted to the violent company to do what is called ‘mobbing real estate’.” The note indicates that the woman is responsible for a minor.

Desokupa is a company dedicated to the manufacture of extrajudicial evictions, acting with coercion and within the limits of legality, and the link of its members with the extreme right is known. Although the company is based in Barcelona, they offer services throughout the Spanish State. “We are a company specializing in evictions of illegally occupied dwellings or with precarious tenants. Creators and pioneers of the legal formula of immediate evictions,” they say on their website. Violence has been manifested on many occasions; in 2018, for example, in Catalonia, a woman reported having been aborted when she was evicted.

The Portuguese Social Rights Office has called on citizens, social partners and institutions to be vigilant. They have warned that the current precarious situation in the housing market cannot lead to speculative abuses or out-of-court interventions that harm people at risk of social exclusion.

“We cannot let some try to solve the problem of homelessness through mafia tactics and hate speech,” they said.