Hard cover, gilt edges, metal clasp: a “very nice” book of about 200 pages. Rosario Bravo, 98, pauses to describe the diary she was given for her 90th anniversary. There she wrote her memoirs for more than five years at the request of one of her children. She then wrapped the book with tape in a little bag that she later kept under her pillow. This was until they took it away, like almost everything “of value”. A year ago, a judicial delegation mistakenly evicted her apartment in a modest penthouse in the La Torrassa neighborhood, in L’Hospitalet de Llobregat (Barcelona). The three beds, the washing machine, utensils, clothes, money, jewelry, television… more than 23,000 euros in belongings disappeared according to the insurance company’s report. The old woman was soon able to repossess her residence, but not her possessions.
No one has corrected this lack or been able to explain where his belongings are. “We don’t want money. Who gives back to my mother the sentimental value of everything lost?” laments Rosario’s son, Emiliano, tired of the various legal proceedings that have followed the event. The family denounces a series of “negligence”. On February 19, 2021, a delegation made up of a solicitor, a court manager and a locksmith went to evict a neighbor downstairs. By mistake they entered Bravo’s house when she was staying with her son for a few days in Terrassa. Three days later, at the notice of a neighbor who noticed something strange, Emiliano went to the apartment and discovered that the lock had been changed, in addition to placing the plate of an alarm company. Fincas Gual, which manages the property, sent a person to open the apartment. “They recognized that they had been wrong,” says Emiliano. The family soon noticed that items were missing.
“My husband’s photograph was not there,” Rosario is moved, remembering how her sister-in-law spent “good money” with her at a time when, in her town, “there was no photographer.” “That they would have taken the painting if necessary, but leave the photo”, she exclaims. Bravo, who was born in 1924 in Santa Cruz de Mudela (Ciudad Real), was widowed four years after getting married. He then had two sons. With them he settled, 62 years ago, in the apartment in L’Hospitalet, along with three brothers, a cousin and his mother, who died five months later. Emiliano, one of his children, spreads out on the table in his house in Terrassa, the same one that his mother visits periodically, all the documents of the legal cases to recover the lost belongings. In one of them he shows photographs that expose what was there before the eviction and what was left after it. “They took everything,” laments Rosario.
A week after the eviction, the old woman’s lawyer filed a claim for annulment of the action with the aim of recovering everything stolen. The court agreed with them. The property, however, appealed, but the judge ordered them to return the belongings, according to the documents presented by the family. The judicial order indicated that some withdrawn electrical appliances “were left on the same street” to be picked up by municipal cleaning services. In April they registered a second complaint, this time criminal, which accused all the parties involved of a series of “negligence” in the process. The complaint was against the attorney, the locksmith and the legal manager, also against the owner of the property and Fincas Gual.
Complaint filed
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Emiliano maintains that the delegation “falsified” the judicial record. In the printed record to carry out the launch, it is already written that there was “no one” on the floor, “nor were there any kind of personal property to be reviewed”: “What do you mean by reviewing? Also, when you are going to carry out an eviction, do you already know that there will be no one inside the property nor will there be any goods or belongings before you see it? According to Emiliano, the former Minister of Justice of the Generalitat Esther Capella, who was interested in the case, told them at the time that “this type of act was from the last century.”
The complaint, however, was filed by the judge last November. In the order, she states that the arguments of the defendants, “clear, consistent and without contradictions between them”, show that “there was no negligence”, although they have made a “regrettable error”. Asked by this newspaper, Fincas Gual has sent the law firm that represents them. They have declined to comment.
One of the arguments used by the members of the judicial committee was that they could not properly identify the number of the floors, which misled them. Hence, according to the car, the entourage asked a neighbor, who told them that the property in question, the one in Rosario, “was the one they were looking for.” The neighbor, according to Emiliano, was not called to testify, nor were her family members called. In addition, she adds, “a few months before” they evicted one of the apartments on the floor below her mother’s: so, Emiliano emphasizes, “they were not wrong.” The family has appealed the file of the case. Although since November they have not received a response from the court, and they do not know if it will be upheld or will be dismissed.
Rosario took three months to return home. There were no beds to sleep in, no eating utensils. The most basic items were replaced by her children, with their own money. Rosario receives about 700 euros of pension, and half of that money is to pay the rent of the apartment, where she has lived alone for almost 20 years. According to Emiliano, they still cannot request the corresponding insurance money while the case is still open. Next Wednesday, February 23, the family, along with friends and neighbors, will gather in front of the L’Hospitalet court to demand an answer. In a statement sent by the family, they underline: “We are going to ask for justice to be done.”
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