Desokupa once again invaded the election campaign. Daniel Esteve’s company put up a banner in downtown Madrid against the government and its parliamentary allies. Along with a photo of the company’s head, the controversial Daniel Esteve, and Pedro Sánchez, the company, dedicated to unemployment, put up a banner addressed to the president of the government: “You in Morocco, desocupa Moncloa”. In addition, it spoils the evicted and refers to United We Can and ERC with the caption: “We miss you all.” Socialists condemned this message before the electoral college.
This is not the first time that Esteve has entered the campaign. He had already done so a few days before Barcelona’s municipal elections to impeach Ada Colau, who was then the city’s mayor and was running for re-election. At the time, the person in charge of Desokupa was mobilized in Barcelona and organized a rally to evict two run-down properties in the Sarrià-Sant Gervasi district, the wealthiest in Barcelona, an area that is usually quiet and incident-free. Despite Estevi’s threats to the residents of these buildings, the eviction was not carried out.
Prior to his eviction case, Esteve devoted himself to nightlife and debt collection, as well as issued by the country. The profile of the person responsible for Desokupa also reported that he was investigated and arrested more than two decades ago. According to sources consulted by the aforementioned newspaper, these arrests “came to nothing because he was acting within the law”.
Desokupa has become a company dedicated to evictions and unemployment with a huge impact, although this type of company has been growing in recent years. Esteve managed to position himself as the most famous member of these vacancy brigades. For years, the owner of an eviction company dedicated himself to spreading scams and racist messages on social media to drive would-be tenants out of the homes they were living in.
This strategy also includes posting personal data, making threats and intimidating people. To achieve his goals, Desokupa no longer uses only the presence of hypermuscular men at the door, he also has social networks where he gathers hundreds of thousands of followers.
Morning TV shows made Esteve famous. “True, television helped us a lot, but we have strength [ahora] It’s because of social media videos,” he explained to this newsroom in 2021. Your company is already flying alone. The influence of his networks allowed Esteve to charge several programs that gave him visibility a few years ago. Susana Griso became the object of criticism from the leader of Desokupa. He launched a campaign against the Espejo Público presenter on his network profiles. In his program, this journalist criticized the methods of Estevi and his workers. “They’re looking for publicity without a legal eviction order, and that’s impossible.” You cannot go to Barcelona to install it, and even more so on such a key day as the start of an election campaign, because you, as a company, want to publicize yourself,” he noted, as Vertele said.
Desocupa’s visibility was increasing before the pandemic and coincided with a peak in the statistics of convictions for usurpation. At that time, some TV programs no longer featured “PAH [Plataforma de Afectados de la Hipoteca] in resource images’, but used ‘occupation images’, explains Victor Palomo, a lawyer and representative of the Madrid Tenants’ Union. He puts the turning point in 2019. From now on, the “subject that appears as citizen power” ceases to be an anti-eviction organization and, he notes, “becomes a desocupa,” he noted in an article published by elDiario. this.
Source: El Diario
