A British homeowner in the Spanish province of Málaga has been hospitalized after traveling from England to confront a group of migrant squatters living in his Spanish property.
The incident occurred on Tuesday in the town of Manilva, located approximately 100 kilometers southwest of Málaga.
The victim, known as Michael, had received a call two days prior from neighbors at the Spanish residential complex informing him of movement within his property. When it became clear a group of men had accessed the property and were now living in it, the British national flew out from Liverpool to recover his home.
According to Spanish newspaper El Confidencial, Michael noticed the locks had been changed, and accessed his property from the balcony of an adjoining apartment. Once inside his home, he identified “three men, probably of Moroccan nationality.”
They reportedly expressed their intention to assert their rights under Spanish law, a tense discussion escalated into an assault when one of the squatters used a bottle to attack the Brit, bloodying his face and torso.
“One of them breaks a glass bottle with which he struck several blows to the complainant’s body and head while he was struggling,” the police report read.
The victim was taken to the hospital where he spent a night under observation.
It later transpired that the squatters had been given access to the property by a former tenant without the owner’s knowledge or consent, according to a local source cited by El Mundo.
Under Spain’s liberal squatting laws, it is notoriously difficult for owners to evict illegal occupants from a property once they have access to it, and judicial intervention is required.
The judicial process in this regard was sped up through constitutional changes in 2018; however, property owners still often find themselves in legal difficulty when attempting to take matters into their own hands.
This is an issue that Mario Jiménez, the mayor of Manilva City Council, wants to see addressed. He expressed concern about the attack generating publicity that “does not do the municipality or anyone outside our borders any good.
“There is a need for sanity to solve the problem of squatting, to provide judges and state security forces and bodies with the necessary tools to combat it,” he added.
