Jaime Sanz stands outside a building in Madrid with his muzzled German Shepherd . On the other side of the door is a couple with a young child who have been illegally occupying the home for three months . They can ’ t pay the rent and they don ’ t want to leave . That ’ s where Sanz comes in . His business , Desokupación Legal – or Legal Eviction – specializes in express evictions . Sanz is one of a handful of men cashing in on the housing crisis in Spain , where more than 260,000 people are living as squatters , according to the Cerdà Institute . They are not police officers or judges . Nor do they have eviction orders to back them up . They are muscle men who work on the edges of the law . For €2,000 , fighters , ex-prison wardens , nightclub doormen and even former Eastern European paramilitary members offer to do in record time what the Spanish justice system takes months to complete : an eviction . I am not going to say they are illegal but they are para-legal . They are on the fringe Police spokesperson Serafín Giraldo Two years ago , Pedro , who prefers not to use his real name , received a call from a neighbor he hadn ’ t seen in 20 years . She told him : “ The people who have rented your apartment are a little strange. ” But stranger still was that Pedro , who had been living overseas for over a decade , had not rented out the place to anyone since his parents died . From his old neighbor , he learned that three young people had falsified a rental contract , changed the locks and occupied his family home in the Sagrada Familia neighborhood in Barcelona . “ If someone had told me they needed the place , I would even have been able to lend it to them . But not like this , ” he says . Pedro was on the point of storming into the apartment but the police warned him there was nothing he could do . His lawyer estimated that it would take eight months to resolve the situation . Then he learned of an alternative option . Desokupación Legal uses dogs in their eviction operations . Claudio Álvarez That ’ s how Pedro met Dimitri from Bosnia Herzegovina . For €350 plus expenses , Dimitri and three of his colleagues pulled up in a van outside the building and “ politely asked ” the squatters to get in the vehicle . They took them for a drive and in “ less than 24 hours there was a new lock on the door and an empty flat , ” says Pedro . “ The house was stripped clean , looted , and they had filled it with bags of fertilizer to set up a marijuana plantation , I imagine , ” he explains on the phone . Since then , the industry has become a lot more professional . Close to a dozen companies now promise fast and legal evictions online . And thanks to the housing crisis , the spike in rental prices , a growing number of drug gangs taking over empty homes and the lack of social housing , business is booming . One of the most polemic figures from the burgeoning industry is Daniel Esteve , the boss of Desokkupa , who brags : “ No one does it like me . I have a gift. ” But while the former boxer and bounty hunter is swamped with requests , he isn ’ t always successful . One of those cases was Marta Domènech , a 47-year-old who had occupied her family home for years after a bank repossessed it from her parents when her father was dying of cancer . “ I had separated , I was very affected by the death of my father , I didn ’ t have a job and I returned home , ” she explains . On September 9 , 2016 , Domènech received a call while she was out : “ This is Daniel from Desokkupa . Don ’ t come home because we will not let you enter . You are being watched and we have an alarm in place , ” she remembers him saying . “ I began to shake with fear. ” This was a process for a judge to resolve Marta Domènech , occupant threatened with eviction Two men from Desokkupa were at her door . They changed the lock and let four representatives from the real estate agency enter . They tried to install an alarm but the Catalan regional police arrived and forced them to leave . Domènech and her daughter watched terrified from the street . “ This was a process for a judge to resolve , ” she says . Domènech accused the company and the real estate representatives of forced entry , duress and “ arbitrary application of the law ” – taking the law into their own hands . The heavy-handed tactics of the companies such as Desokkupa have been criticized by squatter collectives , housing platforms and even the mayor of Barcelona , Ada Colau , who declared war against the legally dubious businesses . Many of the conflicts are resolved by paying the unwanted occupants to leave . But when no agreement can be reached , the companies post staff on the door so that when a squatter leaves , they won ’ t be able to get back in . Sooner or later , those inside end up leaving – either to buy much-needed groceries or in the case of narco apartments because the presence of two security guards – sometimes with guard dogs – is bad for business . Legal or illegal ? There is no consensus on whether these methods are legal . In some cases , the police are known to actively support eviction operations , while other police officers argue the process is illegal . “ I am not going to say they are illegal but they are para-legal . They are on the fringe , ” says the spokesperson of the federal police union ( UFP ) Serafín Giraldo . “ In an ideal world , what I do would not exist , ” says Sanz . “ If the justice system responded efficiently I would have to reinvent my business . But this ideal world doesn ’ t exist here. ” English version by Melissa Kitson .
Property owners turn to extreme measures to protect their properties , and avoid legal battles that can take months to resolve