Defame the poor
Pilar López is the evicted woman who burst into Parliament last Tuesday, October 6th, to let President Prohens know in person that she felt disappointed and abandoned (those are the words she used): having voted for the PP had not served to prevent her from losing the home where she had lived for the last 15 years, after having contributed for 40 years and having worked mainly in the hospitality industry, as a room maid. She had already gone, days earlier, to the Palma City Council plenary session to make her protest heard. Pilar López spent the recent and monstrous summer living inside her car, the only space that separated her from sleeping rough. She is—like Maricarmen, who died this week, like Olga and Javier, two residents of L'Hospitalet de Llobregat who have committed suicide—a victim of greed, speculation, and an out-of-control market that sees housing as a commodity that provides easy and abundant money. It is not: housing—let us insist on it as much as necessary—is a basic right and also a constitutional right, and for that very reason, it is superior to the right to property or the law of supply and demand.
Pilar López would have felt equally disappointed and abandoned even if she had voted for other political parties, because for all parties the housing crisis caught them off guard and already converted into an emergency. In fact, it is a global emergency and, for this reason, the European Union is also working to intervene in the real estate market with measures such as limitations on rental and sale prices, restrictions on tourist rentals, and the obstruction of the accumulation of apartments and houses in the hands of companies or institutions. To get an idea, in Europe as a whole, between 2010 and 2022, housing prices rose by an average of 47% (in some countries, however, the increase reaches up to 200%) and today the population that does not have a home to live in in Europe is 1.2 million people, of whom around 400,000 are children. This, we insist as well, within Europe. The place where thousands and thousands of immigrants want to reach because they understand (rightly so) that life is much better there than in their own countries. But where nevertheless –and here lies the trap– the hegemony of the rich, with no other argument than having more money than others, is once again becoming more widespread and suffocating every day. The so-called welfare societies are retreating, or falling, in favor of the resurgence of a deregulated capitalism, as if we had jumped from the 19th to the 21st century without having gone through the 20th.
Marga Prohens gave Pilar López a fake hug and told her not to let herself be used. The citizen wanted to make it clear, in statements to the press, that she was speaking for herself and not for partisan gain. A while later she was defamed on the IB3 Telenotícies Migdia news program, where the news of Pilar López's interruption at Parliament was reported, accompanied by an unverified piece of information according to which this woman had allegedly received aid from the Palma City Council. The intention was clear: to present her as a freeloader, an unscrupulous person trying to make a living by pity. It is the PP doctrine with victims: praise those that suit their own interests and cast doubt, or directly defame or insult, those that do not suit them as much. They have done it in cases of terrorism, railway accidents, military massacres, and natural disasters. They will do it—they are already doing it—with the victims of the housing crisis. After all, as Marga Prohens's spokesperson said, it does not fit into their heads that Mallorcans might not be able to have a second residence. Aporophobia is the hatred of the poor, and defamation is one of the many forms that this hatred can take.
