Spanish banks curb evictions after evicted tenants commit suicide

Spain's banking association has announced it will freeze eviction orders for the next two years in cases of "extreme hardship," after a woman killed herself moments before she was due to be evicted, the second such death in less than a month.

"This cannot be allowed to go on," said Juan Carlos Mediavilla, a judge who attended the scene after Amaia Egana, 53, leapt from her fourth-floor flat in the northern city of Bilbao on Friday. "It's a problem which has been talked about for some time. The time for talk is over and steps must be taken for something to happen."

Within hours of Egana's death noisy protesters had gathered on the streets of Bilbao. Stickers saying "murderers" were fixed to cash machines, while the governing People's party and opposition Socialists pledged to hold an emergency meeting to agree on reforming mortgage laws.

The Spanish Banking Association (AEB) said its members had already agreed with the government last week to suspend eviction cases for two years for those most in need. This showed "the commitment of the AEB's members, for humanitarian reasons and because of their social responsibility, to stop evictions during the next two years in those cases of extreme need", it said in a statement on Monday.

Maria Cumbicus, who has fallen behind on her mortgage payments since she lost her job as a cleaner three months ago, is in danger of joining the list of 400,000 who have been evicted in Spain since a property boom ended in 2008 and the country sank into economic crisis.

"It is just terrible never knowing if you'll be able to get back into your home every time you go out," said Cumbicus, 50, who is from Ecuador, one of many who moved to Spain when its economy boomed but have since fallen on hard times in a country where one in four are on the dole.