You only need to take a walk around the area of sa Penya, in Ibiza, to see the reality. Sitting on the stairs of Fosc street, a man, with apparent addiction problems, fiddles with a large knife in full view of anyone passing by, including tourists. In Retir Street, broken pipes , raised cobblestones and the smell of garbage. Some familiar faces from the area, who have been using the historic quarter for decades as a drug dealing point, silently sort through household appliances, food scraps, clothes lying on the ground, shopping trolleys and baby toys.
Water falls steadily from the ceiling of a bathroom. DI
Others, sickly looking, come to these streets to buy their daily dose. It’s 11 o’clock on a Friday, but it doesn’t matter. It is the daily reality of the businesses and neighbors in the area, “tired of reporting again and again” to the City Council, to Pep Tur, the councillor of this particular neighborhood, they assure that “nothing is ever done”.
Hole in the roof of a house due to leaks. DI
In one of the caves converted into housing on Carrer del Fosc, which has been completely renovated, a couple suffers daily the consequences of living in what looks like a marginal area but is the centre of the city. “We bought the house 20 years ago with the promise of Marc Costa, then councillor for Heritage, that in a few years they would fix the area and the houses would be revalued,” explains one of the owners. They paid 250,000 euros for their house, located in the historic heart of the city. But for the past 10 years, the criminal acts of their neighbours have kept them awake at night.
With the house flooded with water, “day in and day out”, because many of the residents “are hooked up to the Aqualia meter illegally”, as well as to the electricity meter, they say they feel “totally unprotected” by the authorities. “We pay to live in this house and most of the people who live in the area are squatters and do whatever they want”, criticizes one of them.
“Exhausted” and “frustrated” of having to call the City Council almost daily, as well as Aqualia, the PolicÃa Local and their insurance to fix the constant leaks (the costs amount to 6,000 euros, so far), three years ago they decided to put the house up for sale.
“At the moment we have no buyer,” they explain tired of feeling tied to the neighborhood due to the “terrible conditions” in which it is located. “A lady saw the house and loved it, it looked like she wanted to buy it. However, when they went out, she and her husband heard one man telling another man to pass him more ‘horse’ (heroin) because he had run out,” they recall. “The other replied that he also wanted cocaine,” they add. In these conditions, they say that they find it “almost impossible” to sell their property and continue their lives elsewhere, because “they can’t do it anymore”.
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