Malaga family fears home demolition

A FAMILY with two young children lives in fear of bulldozers arriving on the doorstep to knock down their home in Malaga City.

Elvira Navarro and her husband built their wooden house in the Santa Agueda district of the city back in 2005.

They were reported by the Guardia Civil for building on protected land, and in 2008 a judge gave them both nine-month jail sentences and fines and demanded the house be demolished.

“We paid the fine, but we can’t knock our house down because we have nowhere to go,” Elvira explained.

Both parents are unemployed and have to make ends meet and feed their two children, aged seven and 10, on a €430-a-month government grant.

“If I had a job it wouldn’t have come to this,” Elvira added, insisting that if she had had the means to move out she would have done. Instead, she waits while at any moment machines are likely to arrive on her doorstep to knock her home down.

Meanwhile the council explained that everything possible was being done to rehouse the family and they would not be thrown onto the streets, but the judge’s order had to be followed and it had been put off for a long time already.