The Local Police remained guarding the building throughout the night to prevent those evicted from entering again.
“The problem now is to see where they are going, they have already created quite a few problems here by having this building. Now let's see…” comments a neighbor on Goya Street, next to the building that the Civil Guard and Local Police evacuated yesterday Wednesday due to a fire inside.
The eviction work lasted throughout the morning and much of the afternoon due to the lack of collaboration from the squatters, which caused moments of tension in the area. Crowds of astonished people witnessed the police device, with more than a dozen Civil Guard and Local Police vehicles, which forced part of Tenerife Street to be cut off and caused traffic jams at one of the main access and exit points of Santa Lucía de Tirajana.
“You see that from the moment you pass by, there is garbage in there, mattresses with fecal remains, rats (...) that is what you see from the outside, I don't want to imagine inside,” says a worker from the area, who also affirms that there have been several altercations with neighbors and passersby in the area; “It hasn't happened to me, but many neighbors have complained about spitting, comments, insults and even attacks, especially late at night,” he added.
In fact, in 2022 a squatter climbed onto the façade of the building, fleeing from the police to avoid arrest. An event that was covered by several national media and television stations.
After the eviction this Wednesday, the Local Police was forced to keep part of Tenerife Street closed during the night to prevent the evicted people from squatting in the building again. A surveillance device that, foreseeably, will be maintained until all accesses to the building are walled off and blocked, tasks for which the interior of the property would have to be cleaned previously.
However, despite the police presence and the fact that it has ended a headache for residents and merchants in the area, the concern and fear does not cease. “The thing now is where they go (...) there are 50-60 people who had been living inside and now they are not going to have that 'shed', they are going to look for somewhere else in the area. "That's how it is," commented a resident of the area who witnessed the eviction and the fights that broke out between squatters and agents about this situation.
At the moment it is not known the date on which the necessary sanitation work and blocking of the different accesses to the property will be carried out.
