"They Sold the Flat with Us Inside, as if We Were Rats or Cockroaches"

Olga speaks slowly, as if weighing each word to contain the pain. While fidgeting with her hands, she tries to explain the inexplicable: a court order demands that she and her daughter leave the flat they have lived in for over 20 years. The first eviction attempt occurred last Tuesday, 27th May, but it was postponed for over a month, until 3rd July. A small respite for a woman who has nowhere else to go, except for that small flat in Carolinas, which she bought with her then-husband to provide a home for their daughter. They did not succeed.

The path to this eviction order is long and marked by naivety, the language barrier—she is of Russian origin and, although she has lived in Spain for over two decades, she still retains a strong accent—and, above all, by a series of circumstances that pushed her towards the abyss.

When they bought the house, this woman never imagined things could go so wrong. Shortly after their daughter's birth, her then-partner began to abuse her. They separated, but the mortgage remained in the name of the company they had created together. Olga believed he was still paying. He was not.

"The flat was for Betty. In the end, we will die, but she was going to live here," she explains with a hint of sadness. When the first letter from the bank arrived, she discovered a debt of thousands of euros. That was the beginning of a nightmare of reports, lawyers, and negotiations that eventually led to a social rent that the bank agreed to grant her. She renewed it for several years until 2020, during the pandemic, when the bank sold the property to an investment fund without notifying her.

"They didn't warn me about anything. They just stopped charging me rent, and when I called, they told me they were no longer the owners," she recalls. Since then, she has lived under constant threat: calls, attempts to enter her home, offers of 3,000 euros to leave the property. "They were looking for a way to get us out," she denounces. "They sold us with us inside, as if we were cockroaches or rats. But we are not a plague. We are two people. And when all this started, one of them was a minor."

Olga insists repeatedly that she is not looking to live for free: "I want to pay rent, as I have always done. But let me stay."

In addition to her legal and financial problems, she suffers from severe health deterioration. This 53-year-old woman has several chronic illnesses, including advanced osteoporosis, depression, borderline personality disorder, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. She has been hospitalised several times in psychiatric units following self-harm episodes. "Since I was little, I was curious about what lies beyond death. Now, life outside these walls no longer means anything to me," she confesses. "I used to be very vain, but I no longer have the strength."

The only reason she continues to fight is her daughter, Betty, who has lived her entire life in that flat. "If it weren't for her, I would have left long ago," she admits.

On Monday, 3rd July, a new eviction attempt is scheduled. Mother and daughter will resist once more. In the living room, the furniture is still moved after the last preparation for the judicial commission. "Excuse the mess, we rearranged them to block the eviction," she says with a bitter smile.