Spanish woman jumps to her death as eviction looms

MADRID — A woman in Spain jumped to her death as bailiffs approached to evict her Friday from her fourth-floor apartment for failing to pay the mortgage, officials said.

It was the second apparent suicide linked to evictions. The government recently created a task force to study how to reduce evictions because of the devastating personal impact of repossessions due to tough Spanish mortgage rules and growing unease among the public on the subject.

The unnamed 53-yearold woman threw herself from her balcony in a suburb of the northern Spanish city of Bilbao, the regional Interior Ministry said. She worked at a local bus depot, was married to a former town councillor and had a 21-year-old daughter.

Local judge Juan Carlos Mediavilla told reporters at the scene that it was “necessary to amend cur-rent mortgage legislation” to prevent a recurrence of such events. Employment and Social Security Minister Fatima Banez said late Friday that the government deeply regretted the woman’s death.

If a homeowner in Spain is unable to make the agreed mortgage payments — through unemployment or low income — he or she can get evicted but also remain liable to repay whatever value is left on the mortgage after the repossession.

Since the 2008 property crash, more than 350,000 people have been caught in this trap. There are 500 evictions a day, according to government figures.

On Thursday, the European Court of Justice’s advocate general, Juliane Kokott, handed down a non-binding legal opinion that criticized Spanish legal rules regarding evictions, saying they were incompatible with European norms.