The document where Fageda ceded Son Bordoy to the gypsies

PalmIn 1993 the Balearic Gypsy Christian Cultural Association requested the Palma City Council to grant it They are a new giftA municipally owned property of approximately 33,200 square meters, located in El Molinar (Palma), was requested for the purpose of carrying out promotional activities and interventions related to drug addiction and its subsequent reintegration. The Palma City Council (Cort) accepted the request, and on December 10, 1993, the then-mayor of Palma, Joan Fageda (PP), and the city councilor for Social Action, Bartomeu Oliver, signed a land use agreement, which ARA Baleares has obtained. Fageda's administration even evicted a squatter living on the Son Regalo property to make way for the organization. The squatter repeatedly refused to leave and even requested an extension from the Palma City Council to remain longer. He also proposed giving the organization the Son Fernando Nou property (located next to Son Regalo) as an alternative, but Cort rejected this proposal.

The lease agreement was for a period of less than five years, specifically four, and therefore the decision did not require a plenary session. This document confirms how the then-PP majority in Palma City Council decided that a Roma organization could legally occupy the property and that some people could remain there. The lease expired in 1997, but the Palma City Council's Department of Social Action, specifically the councilor in charge of the area, Carme Sagrado Mezquida (PP), determined that there was "no objection to extending the lease," as stated in the document. However, it appears that when the extension expired, neither of the interested parties (Palma City Council and the residents) attempted to renew it, nor did they formally terminate it. Now, 32 years later, the residents of Son Bordoy have received a police summons for the voluntary cessation of their illegal occupation of public property. The same city council and the same political majority that authorized their stay now want to evict them.

Sources consulted by ARA Baleares link the land transfer to the power the Roma community held in Palma at the time and their close relationship with various councilors on Joan Fageda's team. "They had an office in Palma City Hall and managed aid for the prison, among other things," they recall. All the power granted to them "translated into votes" that benefited the leaders of that time, who, coincidentally, belonged to the same political party as the municipal government that now wants to evict them from Son Bordoy to build 750 homes, 150 of which will have to be public housing, 350 price-controlled, and the rest market-rate.

The residents of Son Bordoy, especially the older ones, remember as if it were yesterday the day Fageda ceded the land to them and the document that confirmed it. In fact, faced with attempts by the Palma City Council (Cort) to evict them, they have repeatedly emphasized that "Mr. Fageda and Ms. Angelines"—whom they describe as the former mayor's right-hand woman—allowed them to live in Son Bordoy 32 years ago. But they don't have the document that proves it, and Cort refuses to give it to them, they claim. This is the document that ARA Baleares has obtained.

Before moving to Son Bordoy, the group lived in shacks scattered throughout Palma, as is the case of Ángel, a 67-year-old man who has lived in Son Bordoy for 32 years. He lived in a shack on the seafront in the Molinar neighborhood, where now there are only villas and high-value homes. It all seems like a paradox. They were evicted from their homes and concentrated in Son Bordoy with the aim of building housing, and almost three decades later, history is repeating itself. But, unlike 30 years ago, they want to take their homes "without offering them any housing alternatives," according to the Platform of People Affected by Mortgages (PAH).