Desokupa, the company that is dedicated to extrajudicial evictions of homes, closed 2023 with losses of 6,909 euros, a situation far from the 171,463 euros of profits it obtained in 2022, according to the latest accounts that it has just sent to the Commercial Registry. However, turnover grew in the year in which its founder, Daniel Esteve, established himself as a political and social agitator and in which he himself raised his salary to 109,000 euros per year.
The company has managed to capitalize on the activity of its leader, in an annual exercise in which the businessman made the leap from social networks to the streets, participating in rallies both in Madrid, on Ferraz Street, and in Barcelona, and deploying a canvas attacking Pedro Sánchez weeks before the general elections. Conciencia y Respect 1970, the company that operates under the Desokupa brand, recorded a turnover of 1.1 million euros in the last annual year, which represents an increase of almost 100,000 euros compared to the previous year. However, it closed the year with losses.
All in all, Esteve has received a total remuneration of 798,000 euros in the last five years, of which 109,183 euros correspond to his salary as administrator in 2023, always according to the documentation consulted by elDiario.es. In the last financial year, the leader of Desokupa raised his salary by 18.5%, an increase considerably higher than the growth in the company’s turnover.
This editorial team has tried to obtain the employer’s version to find out, among other things, why the salary has been increased. The owner of the company has not given any explanation and has chosen to pour serious insults and disqualifications against this journalist and against elDiario.es and has included in his response a gif of Hitler.
Esteve’s popularity would not be understood without the coverage that television magazines gave him during his first years carrying out extrajudicial evictions. Some spaces, especially the morning programs, dedicated minutes and minutes to interviewing the company leader. The reporters recorded their techniques, portraying how the owner of Desokupa and his employees – muscular and tattooed men – communicated in an intimidating way with tenants or squatters, whether through a telephone, a door or directly in the street.
The company Conciencia y Respeto 1970 began operating in 2016. Before finding the business that would bring him fame, Esteve had worked as a boxer, sporting event promoter, and debt collector. In fact, he met the partner with whom he launched Desokupa in a gym, the agitator was his boxing teacher. It was between training and sessions sparring when the idea of carrying out unemployment outside the law was taking shape.
The company began to take off quickly, in 2018 it already had a turnover of more than one million euros, reaching its business peak in 2019 with 1.7 million euros. It also recorded positive results when starting to operate, it had profits of 324,000 in 2018, although, as happened in 2023, in 2021 it registered losses. Esteve’s partner left the company in the first years of operation and since then the agitator has been the sole administrator of the company.
Nine employees
According to the company’s accounts, in recent years, Esteve lowered his salary. In 2019 he had a salary of 211,000 euros for being the administrator of the company, in 2021 that remuneration stood at 185,000 and in 2022 it was reduced to 92,000 euros. For its part, the item allocated to personnel expenses has not changed much in the last two years, standing at 357,000 euros in the last annual year. Currently, the company has nine employees.
In 2023, Esteve’s ‘ultra show’ jumped from television shows and social networks to the streets. The leader of Desokupa burst into the general and regional election campaigns. Weeks before the July 23 elections, he placed a banner in the center of Madrid aimed at Pedro Sánchez. “You to Morocco, Desokupa to Moncloa,” was the message that was read accompanied by images of the President of the Government and himself. PSOE and ERC denounced this action before the Electoral Board, this institution dismissed the lawsuit considering that Esteve’s messages were protected by freedom of expression.
Ada Colau was also a victim of the Desokupa leader’s street agitation. Esteve took to the streets and tried to mobilize his followers to evict two squatted properties in the Sarrià-Sant Gervasi district, the wealthiest in Barcelona. The rally coincided with the start of the municipal election campaign. Although the businessman did not carry out any evictions, he did manage to generate tension in the street and once again starred in television programs. He was also present – along with Alvise Pérez – in the demonstrations that the extreme right organized last winter on Ferraz Street, in front of the PSOE headquarters in Madrid.
Esteve has continued to consolidate his profile as an agitator of the extreme right. In March he began publishing a daily video, which he called ‘Desokupa news’ and in it he presents his opinion on those issues that mark the agenda of the extreme right. In it he insults progressive politicians, exposes racist messages and, on some occasions, has spread hoaxes.
The Council of Europe’s journalists’ defense platform condemned the threats made by the businessman to editors of the ‘Investigative Team’ program on La Sexta. In one of the videos that he posted on his social networks, Esteve assured that he had data on the addresses of the reporters, as well as his children’s schools.
The position that this agitator has had in recent years has not prevented the Unified Police Union (SUP) from signing an agreement with him to train agents affiliated with that organization. This is the new business that the leader of Desokupa, martial arts and self-defense classes, has opted for.
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