A decade ago, Rosa and Jesús believed in the promise of the new politics. They contributed money to Podemos when the party talked about equality, social justice and defense of the weak. Today, that same couple, retired, has been left without a home, without rental income and without faith in the left.
“I am a socialist and I have been a member of the party for many years and my husband and my son are from Podemos. But when I saw that it was decided to support the squat, it was over. They are giving cover to these scoundrels. This is not about ideology, but about common sense,” Rosa María tells Susanna Griso in Public Mirror.
Their story begins in Denia, where they had a home with which they dreamed of enjoying their retirement. Today, that house is occupied. The tenant stopped paying more than a year and a half ago and lives there, according to Rosa, “at our expense, with a pool and on the beach, which has taken me 70 years to have.”
“They owe us 8,000 euros”
Rosa and Jesús have more than 8,000 euros in defaults. And while the tenant takes advantage of the judicial slowness, they continue to face the expenses: electricity, water and maintenance. “They call us rentiers, but she is the rentier! She is occupying my house,” Rosa laments.
The economic blow also comes at the worst time. Jesús has already suffered two heart attacks and Rosa is overcoming cancer. Both dreamed of retiring peacefully after decades of work, but reality is very far from that dream: “We saw our tenant’s career on the Internet… it’s terrifying. It doesn’t surprise me that she is vulnerable, but chronically vulnerable because she doesn’t want to work because she lives very well that way.”
Since then, his life has become an endless judicial wait. They don’t know when they will be able to get their home back, if ever.
“Squatters do not exist”
The situation of Rosa and Jesús is found in a context where there is a permanent political debate about the occupation in the country. According to the Ministry of the Interior, around 16,400 complaints are registered per year for usurpation or trespass. However, Podemos downplays this phenomenon.
“I don’t know people whose home has been occupied,” confessed Lara Hernández, who has been leading the announcement of a new confluence alliance between Sumar, IU, Más Madrid and the Comuns, scheduled to materialize on February 21, 2026. Under this ideology, in an interview in Public Mirror He pointed out that “the squatters do not exist. They are 0.057% of the total.”
Faced with this data, Rosa points out that on the affected platform alone there are more than 50,000 cases “and there are many more of us.” The contrast between numbers and experience fuels the feeling of abandonment: “I supported them financially and they deceived me. In the next elections I will vote blank,” says Jesús.
Rosa and Jesús are not an isolated case. His story is an example of the discontent of many voters who, after years of broken promises and scandals, feel politically abandoned.