Evitions

Spanish banks to restrict evictions after suicides
Two-year freeze in cases of extreme hardship as union backs police who refuse to enforce orders
A Madrid bank is daubed with the word 'murderers'after a woman who was about to be evicted killed herself
Spain's banking association announced on Monday it would freeze eviction orders for the next two years in cases of "extreme hardship",following widespread alarm and protests after a woman killed herself on Friday moments before she was due to be evicted, the second such death in less than a month.
"This cannot be allowed to go on," saidJuan Carlos Mediavilla, a judge who attended the scene after Amaia Egaña, 53, leapt from her fourth-floor flat in the northern city of Bilbao.
"It's a problem which has been talked about for sometime. The time for talk is over and steps must be taken for something to happen."
Within hours of Egaña's death noisy protesters had gathered on the streets of Bilbao. Stickers saying "murderers" werefixed to cash machines, while the governing People's party and opposition Socialists pledged to hold an emergency meeting on Monday to agree on reforming mortgage laws.
Maria Cumbicus, who has fallenbehind 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 andthe 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 originally from Ecuador, oneof 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. Her husband was forced to return to Ecuador because he wasself-employed and not entitled to unemployment benefit after losing his job.
Cumbicus's flat on the outskirts of Pamplona, a city famous for its annual bull-running festival, was put up for auction in...