It is 10.45am yesterday morning and the entrance to a finca in Terol Street, in Cala de Bou, West coast of Ibiza, is unusually hectic. Outside we find the owners of the property, Santiago and Eloísa Planells, accompanied by their legal representative and some neighbours from the area who are waiting for the arrival of the judicial commission. On the other side of the fence, inside the property, are Giuseppe and Raquel. She is holding a four-month-old baby in her arms.
“On the night of 3rd to 4th August, they broke into the house and changed the lock. We called the Guardia Civil, but they told us that, as it was not our first residence, they could not enter”, says Santiago Planells, who describes with obvious nervousness how this ordeal began.
Since the property in Ibiza was taken over, four adults and four children aged between 12 years old and four months old have been living in the house. When Raquel entered the house, she was already pregnant with the youngest child. The couple says that the children’s father does not pay her child support, and that they have contacted Sant Josep’s Social Services. The three older children are now in school. Giuseppe claims that they were victims of a scam: “An Englishman offered to rent this to us for 500 euros. We paid him 1,500€, three months in advance. But two weeks later the owners turned up and we saw that we had been conned.
Eloísa Planells refutes this version: “They keep changing the story. First it was a Moroccan, now an Englishman. They don’t know what he looked like or where he came from. They’re lying”.
For the full article, please visit Diario de Ibiza website here.