Affected by the de-registrations in Palma: "They have taken away my right to vote, go to the doctor, or get married"

PalmaSeveral people affected by deregistration have reported this Thursday at the Palma plenary that their situation leaves them without access to basic rights such as healthcare, voting, or marriage.

They did so during the citizen interventions session, invited by the Platform of People Affected by Mortgages (PAH) of Mallorca, whose spokesperson, Àngela Pons, has reproached the government team for committing an "illegality".

One of the affected individuals is Luis Gómez, a 53-year-old man who lives in a caravan parked in Son Hugo and has lived in Mallorca for 16 years.

“Three years ago I registered, and two years later, the City Council deregistered me. I'm not asking for a house, but for them to let me live with rights, because they have taken away my right to marry, to vote, or to go to the doctor. I see myself thrown on the street without any rights”, he lamented.

Ariadna, who also lives in a motorhome in Palma, has not been deregistered, but she has encountered multiple obstacles in accessing the registry.

“I have been trying to register in Palma for two years, where I live effectively and continuously, as I work here and my daughter is schooled in the municipality”, she explained.

According to her account, at the municipal offices they did not want to admit her documentation, which is why she initiated the procedures online, so far without success.

“I have not been granted registration, but neither have I been formally denied. I have only received constant referrals to other organizations such as the Red Cross or social services”, she stated.

His case, he assured, has been brought to the attention of the Ombudsman, who on several occasions has urged Palma City Council to provide a solution.

“You are breaking the law, and this must be fixed. We are tired of the rights that correspond to us as citizens being violated day by day”, concluded the spokesperson for the PAH.

The controversy over de-registrations reaches the plenary session

The controversy over de-registrations dates back a few weeks, when the PSOE of Palma accused the councilor for Social Services, Lourdes Roca, of requesting lists of people in a situation of social emergency with the intention of de-registering them.

The socialists assured that Roca had requested from the Red Cross the list of about 300 people in a situation of social emergency to remove them from the registry and that, therefore, she had lied when she said it was common for the entity to send these lists.

“She linked it to a usual census review task, when in reality it had never been applied in the case of people in a situation of social emergency”, the socialists countered, based on information from the Red Cross, which confirmed this extreme.

For its part, the City Council has insisted that the review of certain registrations of people in a situation of vulnerability responds to compliance with current regulations and is carried out following technical criteria established by municipal services.

This issue was the subject of two motions —one from Podem and another from the PSOE— which were debated in this Thursday's plenary session and which, despite not being approved, served for the municipal groups to express their positions.

Outside the system

The councilwoman from Podem, Lucía Muñoz, has considered that this is not a “simple revision of the registry”, but rather a “massive removal of registrations that is leaving thousands of people out of the system”.

“Mr. Mayor, you are turning vulnerability into a reason for exclusion and you have declared war on the poor. That is why we demand that you stop the cancellations, that you give explanations, and that you assume political responsibility for the councilwoman's lies”, she insisted.

The socialist Daniel Oliveira has accused the municipal government team of “playing with the right to healthcare, to schooling, to social services, and to the possibility of regularizing their administrative situation”.

“They have turned registration into a tool for exclusion and systematically persecute the most vulnerable, who should find an open door in this City Council and not a trap”, he stressed.

Miquel Àngel Contreras (MÉS per Palma) has wondered what the government team's intention is in closing “the door to basic rights” for hundreds of people.

The councilwoman for Interior Government, Mercedes Celeste, has defended the government team's version and argued that no changes have been made to the registry regulations, beyond establishing that social entities must update every six months —previously it was annually— the list of people they assist and who continue without resolving the need for registration in an ordinary manner.

“The government team is on the side of the law that you set from Madrid”, she snapped at the socialists. According to the councilwoman, and as Mayor Jaime Martínez already stated, the central government would have deregistered about 50,000 people in Palma. “And you are the ones of dignity and vulnerability”, she added.

On this matter, the spokesperson for Vox, Fulgencio Coll, has limited himself to thanking the government team “for complying with the law and doing their job”.