Mortgaged Lives
Vidas Hipotecadas

By Ada Colau and Adrià Alemany
English Translation by Michelle Teran

Free English PDF Download

In lieu of a fee, Michelle asks that you consider making a donation to the PAH.

Mortgaged Lives from Michelle Teran.
Street Action by the PAH, Platforma de Afectados por la Hipoteca.

 

“Each week you cry after these meetings with the homeowners, but not just with their pain.
There is joy, too, because every week there are problems that get resolved. It is a very beautiful thing.”
NYT article on the PAH- Leading the Charge on Spain's Mortgage Crisis (December 20, 2013)

The right to housing has been systematically violated: difficulty in accessing housing, despite being a fundamental right, now holds back hundreds of thousands of families who demand a fairer mortgage system.

Written by two of the founders of the PAH, Mortgaged Lives explains the causes, points to those responsible for the Spanish mortgage crisis and its broader situation. Ada and Adrià analyze the role of the public administration, Moveover they reveals the fights carried out by the PAH through first-person accounts, and offers advice and useful resources for defending the right to housing and avoiding abuses of power by the banks and financial institutions.

Ada Colau and Adrià Alemany (-Original Spanish version published by Cuadrilatero de Libros, Barcelona, 2012)
Prologues by Gerard Pisarello and José Coy
English translation by Michelle Teran

Mortgaged Lives is a tranlation project initiated by artist Michelle Teran

On Michelle
Born in Canada, Michelle Teran is an artist living and working in Berlin. She is currently developing a performance and feature-length film on the financial and housing crisis in Spain, following the lives of four women living in Madrid who have experienced eviction. Both performance and film map out the procedures of homelessness, social estrangement and subsequent radicalization of four women through their involvement in the Plataforma de Afectados por la Hipoteca (PAH). Their stories unfold within a series of group sessions led by a team of young social workers and psychologists who are researching the psychosocial impacts of eviction.