What would you be willing to do to help an elderly person about to lose everything?
Well, an anonymous man invested 109,680 euros (almost 600,000,000 million pesos) to buy the house that they were going to take from María Ángeles Otegi, an 81-year-old woman who had put her home as a promise to pay a loan her son had acquired, who died owing several installments.
The lender claimed what they owed him by putting María Ángeles’s house up for auction and the woman was about to lose what had been her home for 30 years in Guipúzcoa, a Spanish province.
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A soap opera case
According to the newspaper La Vanguardia, this story begins in 2012, when Otegi guaranteed a loan of 60,000 euros (approximately 300,000,000 million pesos) for his son with his home. The yield had an interest of 12.5% and was projected to be paid in five years.
But tragedy struck at his door, and his son passed away a year and a half after signing the loan.
Since the payments were defaulted, the lender began the procedures to collect and keep the house. The woman did not know what was happening until 2021, when the auction and the threat of eviction were imminent.
María Ángeles had already received an eviction threat, which motivated her to seek help on local platforms. At that time, Stop Evictions Gipuzkoa provided her with advice and accompanied her through the process.
The platform was in charge of carrying out the defense of the woman and they noticed the application of an abusive clause.
“The usurer lender Reno Amusement SL, based in Madrid, formalized a loan for 60,000 euros with the deceased son of this woman with the guarantee of his mother’s already paid home and with the abusive clause of early maturity, declared void by the Court of Justice of the European Union,” the organization said.
From the platform, they asked the court to require the lender to indicate “what is the total amount of the pending installments to date, in order to see the possibility of suspending the auction and be able to pay only the unpaid installments, the amount of which is unknown, and not the total debt”.
But their goal with the petition was to delay the auction while they searched for solutions to pay off the loan.
At that point, the debt had increased by almost 100%, reaching the figure of 109,680 euros, an unpayable number for her.
But not for her neighbor, a citizen who has not wanted to come to light, but who the woman claims to know very well.
This person bought the house and assured the woman that “she will be able to live in her house until she dies.”
“I feel very happy, I have gained a lot in health,” María Ángeles assured the Basque public radio television, EiTB.
With this case, which gained visibility, Stop Evictions Gipuzkoa continues to make visible the drama experienced by elderly people who have put up their homes as collateral for their children’s loans.
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LAURA ALEJANDRA ALBARRACÍN RESTREPO
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