Compiled with the help of artificial intelligence, based on Spanish-language information. Source below the article.
Gran Canaria woman, 87, signs for the flat she has rented for 50 years
The Cabildo de Gran Canaria has highlighted the stark contrast between two women of the same age: Antonia, an 87-year-old who this week signed the deeds to the flat she has lived in for 50 years in El Lasso, in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, and Maricarmen, also 87, who has been evicted from her home in the El Retiro area of Madrid.
A home built by the island government in 1975
The island authority explained that the property forms part of the 30 blocks of housing, single-storey houses aside, built by the island government in 1975 in the capital’s El Lasso neighbourhood, and that the woman moved into one of the homes a year later.
Her daughter Alicia stressed that after the deeds were signed, “everyone ended up applauding and looking at my mother, who was happy and even seemed younger”. “She is calm now because it has been a dream for her, and the whole family is delighted because it is what she deserved after she brought us up,” she added.
A push to regularise 109 outstanding properties
The Cabildo noted that the signing forms part of a process driven by the island institution’s Heritage Service to regularise the situation of the 109 homes still awaiting deeds out of the 500 originally built. The initiative is helping to speed up the transfer of ownership and has moved forward over the past three months with the sending of a letter inviting residents to update their details or payments.
The original contract in the 1970s included an initial payment to obtain the keys and a monthly instalment of a little over five euros until 1994, ending with a final payment of 800 euros to the Cabildo to obtain ownership, equivalent to 305,461 pesetas at the time. The Cabildo now sells each property for 1,835.65 euros, to which between 300 and 400 euros in notary fees and a further 300 euros in registry costs are added.
Twenty-eight deeds signed since 2015
The Cabildo’s reinforcement of the process is bringing to a conclusion and accelerating a path that has made possible the signing of 28 deeds since 2015, eight of them this year, with a further six expected on 14 October, as the respective drafts are already prepared and a date has been set.
The president of the Cabildo de Gran Canaria, Antonio Morales, said that “there are decisions whose significance goes far beyond an administrative file”. “The satisfaction of knowing that people in their eighties, in many cases, can now gain ownership of their homes in El Lasso, after so many years living in them as tenants, is better understood if we are capable of putting ourselves in their shoes for a moment,” he observed.
Morales added that “it is not only acquiring a property, it is closing a long chapter of uncertainty and recognising a life story, turning into a right something that for decades was, above all, belonging and home. And now we can share their joy. Because doing justice also means recognising the value of a life built around a home,” he concluded.
What’s happening in the Canaries – straight to your phone
News, weather alerts and practical updates – direct from the islands, in English. We live here and know what’s going on – before the international media catch up. Everything lands on our WhatsApp channel – no middlemen, no algorithm. Curated for families, expats and travelers.
Canary Islands housing crisis deepens as rent caps ignored
La Laguna awards €18.6m El Cardonal rehabilitation contract
Mass protest in Las Palmas against evictions and overtourism
Canary Islands banana prices finally rise after summer crisis
Police exam scandal reaches Canary Islands Parliament
Tenerife eviction halted after mass protest in Santa Cruz
Canary Islands defy national slump as property sales rise 2.1%
Family demands probe into Fuerteventura demolition operation
Canary Islands: Tourists Now Outnumber Residents
