One thing I don't get -- if the law doesn't help why don't the owners of these properties release fart spray everywhere and turn the heat up to max until it is unlivable?
If the okupas have been there for longer than 48 hours without you trying to get rid of them, doing something like that could be considered harassment and/or endangering the occupants' health, so you'd probably face criminal charges for it. You're not allowed to alter the living conditions to force them out, but you need to (within 48 hours of the occupation) legally get them out of the property.
When you live there you know how to "fix" them but otherwise you are not obligated to fix them.
The buildings are occupied because the owner do not live there. Squatters target housings that are left empty by owners who are just speculating on the market.
I personally know a handful of cases where okupas tried to take people's primary residence that they just purchased and were in the process of reforming before moving, for example. And every single case was solved quickly by local police, as it's breaking and entering, not a occupation.
The sprays could be made very difficult to disconnect. A new one would activate each day in a new location. If day 1 spray is disconnected, day 2 would be twice as much volume.
It has been shown on Youtube that fart spray does work for theft, it's time to deploy it as an actual product everywhere.
The reality of the legal dimensions is probably much more complex though, but it's helpful to have a simplistic mental picture of what's expected to happen.
Of course in less close knit communities it would be different; a third time was the house of an english bloke who only came over for the summer; they put all his stuff outside in the rain in the winter, made a weed grow place out of it and until they had proof of the weed, they couldn’t get them out. House was completely fucked when they got it back including the furniture which was outside all winter. Squatting is one thing and you could agree with it, but this shit is insane. And trying to get them doesn’t work as they clearly don’t have money to begin with.
The reasoning behind this is that some shady landlords might try to claim that genuine tenants are squatters in order to get rid of them. There are plenty of desperate people who'd accept a verbal contract and payment in cash, after all. Not that hard of a choice when the alternative is being homeless. Oh, but you paid your rent a day late? Sorry, you're now a "squatter", so we're cooking you alive until you leave.
Making it too easy to get rid of squatters would expose the most vulnerable people in society to even more abuse, and making it trickier for absentee landlords to get rid of real squatters is considered a fair price to prevent this.
This, exactly. These kinds of slanted articles that only state the issue from the perspective of negligent absentee landlords, whether written by ChatGPT or otherwise, all have the same problem: that's not how property disputes are resolved. The first thing that a court would have to establish is that the person trying to remove another person from a given place would be whether the first person has any right to the place, and to what extent. And the next thing would be the question of whether the second person has a stake in the place, and the nature and extent of that interest. Then they have to balance interests.
I know Spain is not America and doesn't share America's uniquely bad system of estates, but we see this all the time in America where a self-described landlord wants the county sheriff to immediately taser some old lady, but they can't even sufficiently demonstrate that they own the home.
That doesn't stop people from circumventing this requirement, on either side of the contract.
Take in mind that the post shared here is written by a company that provides listing services.
Housing is more of a right in Spain than in other countries, and at least in Catalonia, there is precedent that it supersedes property rights.
If your revenue is not enough to pay for an housing under regular contract but a shaddy owner allows you to pay a rent for the place so that he can bypass a number of regulations by pretending he has no tenants, would you choose living in the street or a car or would you accept it, hoping it is a temporary situation?
Most people would choose the later hence the way the laws are written. Landowners are usually the wealthy ones, so the less at risk of suffering.
That seems far-fetched as a risk. Why would a company offering rentals push out someone who paid rent (even if late) and lose out on revenue/maintenance costs trying to get another renter?