Last Monday they responded to the call of the Mortgage Affected Platform (PAH) to support colleagues. Vidal Felipe Hernandez (82 years old), his mother Juana Martina (100) and his wife, Hortensia Hernandez (73), they had more than enough reasons to take to the streets to protest the housing situation. Between the three of them they are over 255 years old and have a total income of 900 euros thanks to two contributory pensions. And they were, until yesterday morning, with one foot on the street. The three elderly people live in a nephew’s house in the area of Slaughterhouse, But he has to sell the apartment and go to Madrid to take care of his father, who has Alzheimer’s.
Vidal, Juana and Hortensia have been on the verge of sleep rough but last Monday’s rally allowed them to expose their bloody case to the media and the next day [ayer a primera hora] Ibavi contacted Angela Ponsfrom the PAH, to offer them social housing.
«We are still shaking. “We are giving thanks to God,” said Hortensia Hernández yesterday afternoon. After several hours, they have not assimilated that their luck has changed thanks to a phone call. “We are in a very difficult situation for months and this has been a balm,” Hortensia acknowledges.
Although they have looked for rooms to rent (the apartment was already an impossible dream), no one wants to accommodate them. «We go to the Social securityal Municipal Board of Housingto Ibavi and finally, to the PAH,” they say. And it has been the Platform that has turned to these three elderly people. “It has been wonderful, they have taken the case with such great love that we do not have enough words to thank them,” say Vidal and Hortensia.
A life working
They came twenty years ago from Cuba to Mallorca. Vidal has worked as a Primary Education teacher, pastor and health technician. «I have worked for more than fifty years“says Vidal, who opened a nursing home in his native Cuba, “because there they are not bad, they are worse. “They don’t have access to medication or food.” Hortensia has also worked as a teacher in Cuba all her life and is now dedicated to taking care of her husband and mother-in-law, both of whom are in delicate health.
Age and their salaries are a serious obstacle to living in Palma: it is not an easy place for older people or for people with little income. “This is a miracle”they acknowledge. The ruthless island real estate market did not give them a single opportunity to find an alternative.
Ángela Pons, from the PAH, states that “next Monday, Vidal and Hortensia will meet with Ibavi to deliver the documentation.” The situation, he says, is critical: “The Anti-eviction Office doesn’t stop There are kids with jobs who share a room and employed mothers who can’t find an apartment because the agencies don’t want children. “Everything is nonsense.”
