“EH (Euskal Herria) ez da salgai!” (“The Basque Country is not for sale!”) The phrase blooms again on the facades of real estate agencies on the Basque coast. As in the days of ETA, the Basque separatist organization (self-dissolved in 2018). “At the time, we put gas cylinders in front of agencies. We are not there, fortunately“blows this real estate agent from Ustaritz who found the walls of his premises tagged twice in a few months.
Here, about twenty kilometers from Biarritz, as everywhere in the region, finding accommodation has become very difficult: the apartments previously rented out for the year have been converted into furnished accommodation intended for tourists – when they are not sold at prices that newcomers, often teleworkers, are accused of having detonated.
“Today, it’s not normal to buy a home, to ask the tenant, suddenly, to release, to make a speculative investment”
Txetx Etcheverry, member of the Alda associationto “Special Envoy”
So in the population, anger rises, and actions are organized. Not a week goes by without a commando operation. In Biarritz, a team of “Special Envoy” witnessed the occupation of a studio. It has just been sold and then put up for rent on Airbnb, and the Alda association (‘change’, in Basque) has reserved it. About twenty activists take over the premises for a press conference … after having redone the “decor” of the apartment by putting up posters and leaflets.
“A work of pedagogy“, explains Txetx Etcheverry, member of the association,”a spotlight on a particular angle of the problem, so that the population, elected officials, officials, understand its full scope, the urgency to act“. What Alda denounces,”it is speculation, and it is the commodification of the common goods that are housing and land. (…) What we are asking for is compensation: the obligation, for someone who puts an apartment on permanent tourist accommodation, to compensate for it by producing, by creating new accommodation.“When a year-round rental disappears from the Basque coast, the law currently does not provide for any compensation obligation.
Extract from “When living in the country becomes too expensive”, a report to see in “Special Envoy” on October 21, 2021.
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