In Spain, squatting in empty homes is increasingly resolved not by courts but by private firms like Desokupa, which use an “access control” method instead of forcing their way into a flat.
In short
- Desokupa charges from €3,000 for an eviction using the “access control” method, without forcing its way into a flat.
- In 2023 the company reported a €6,900 loss while its founder raised his personal salary to €109,000.
- Setting up a post at a building’s entrance legally requires a 3/5 owner vote, but this rule is often ignored.
- The only confirmed conviction against company staff is a €5,800 fine for filming someone without consent — not for violence.
- In the UK, illegal occupation is a criminal offence; in France, eviction decisions are made within 48 hours.
What Desokupa Is and How the Company Started
Desokupa was registered in the summer of 2016. Its founder, Esteve, had helped a friend get uninvited guests out of a flat and recognized the demand behind it — the desperation of owners who simply want their property back. The name blends the Spanish words for “conscience” and “respect.”
The founder holds a firearms licence, a knife-combat instructor certificate and a black belt in kickboxing. He has fought 15 boxing matches and holds two university degrees, one of them in physical education and sport. He speaks five languages.
Yet Esteve himself grew up in a family of five children in a 50 m² flat — not the most obvious starting point for someone who would later build a business around evictions. For the past five years he has visited terminally ill children in hospitals and says he wants to set up a charitable foundation to support them.
How the “Access Control” Method Works — and What It Costs
The scheme Desokupa uses is legally described as “access control” — in Spanish, “desco.” Company staff do not force their way into a flat: that would be a criminal offence, illegal entry into someone’s home, and in Spain this is not something even eviction-for-hire operators treat lightly.
Instead of breaking in, sturdy-looking staff simply wait by the entrance until the occupant steps out for cigarettes, bread, or fresh air. The moment the door closes behind them, they are not let back in: the lock is changed, and two athletic-looking men take up position at the entrance. Formally, there was no break-in — the person left on their own and simply could not get back inside.
Formally, there was no break-in — the person left on their own and simply could not get back inside.
Setting up such a post legally requires a qualified majority vote of the building’s residents’ association — not simple consent, but the agreement of owners representing 3/5 of the votes and 3/5 of the building’s ownership shares. In practice this formality is often skipped, which is exactly what turns the method into a legal grey zone: not a clear breach of the law, and not outright vigilantism either, but a border territory where the Civil Guard steps in in some regions while police in others prefer to stay out of it.
Demand for these services is, by the company’s own figures, enormous: it reports receiving around 300 requests a day from distressed property owners. The minimum price for an operation starts at €3,000, and the final bill can climb by several thousand more depending on how complicated the case is.
The “access control” method is not technically a break-in, but setting up a post legally requires a 3/5 majority vote of the building’s owners — in practice, this is often skipped.
Desokupa’s Finances: How Big the Squatter-Eviction Business Got
Data from the Spanish commercial registry, filed by the company itself year by year, doesn’t add up to a smooth growth curve — it’s a jagged line of losses running alongside the founder’s rising personal income.
| Year | Revenue / turnover | Profit / loss | Founder’s personal income |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | €1.7 million | — | €211,000 |
| 2020 | over €1.5 million (staff grew from 14 to 52) | €50,000 loss | — |
| 2021 | — | — | €184,000 |
| 2022 | just over €1 million (main entity) | €171,000 net profit | — |
| 2023 | up 9.5% | €6,900 loss | €109,000 |
The company’s assets exceed €1 million, and its registered address sits in an upscale district of Barcelona.
The most telling year is 2023: filings show a €6,900 loss, yet that same year the founder raised his own salary to €109,000 while company revenue climbed 9.5%. The official registry places these two figures side by side — a business loss and a rise in the owner’s income — without offering a direct explanation for the gap.
The official registry places these two figures side by side — a business loss and a rise in the owner’s income — without offering a direct explanation for the gap.
Other spending from the same period: €40,000 went into an advertising campaign in Madrid, and the company says it donates 5% of its income to a children’s cancer foundation.
Alongside the main business, a related entity operates in real estate buying and selling. The founder has publicly claimed it barely functions, but its 2019 filings list 14 employees, €85,000 in revenue and €95,000 in net profit. By 2020, that entity’s staff had grown to 52 people and its turnover topped €1.5 million — the exact same headcount and turnover figures reported by the main company for the same year.
Desokupa’s Finances Year by Year
Revenue kept climbing, but net profit repeatedly slipped into the red.
- 2019 revenue€1.7 million
- 2020 loss€50,000
- 2022 profit€171,000
- 2023 loss€6,900
- Founder’s personal income, 2023€109,000
In 2023 the company reported a €6,900 loss while its founder raised his own salary to €109,000 — the registry offers no explanation for the gap.
How the Company Moved Into Politics: City Halls and the Vox Party
In 2022, Desokupa launched paid consultancy services for city councils on tackling illegal occupation — €3,000 a year out of municipal budgets. The founder claimed he had already been pitching this service to town halls across the country for four years before that.
In November 2022, Pedro Muñoz, a Vox party representative in the municipality of Alcorcón near Madrid, personally met with the company’s leadership and announced on social media that if the party won the elections scheduled for May 2023, Desokupa would be officially given access to the city’s budget. The plan was specific: residents would file a complaint with the town hall, the town hall would directly hire the private firm to carry out evictions, and the costs would be covered entirely by municipal funds. Muñoz proposed setting up a dedicated anti-occupation office at the town hall.
Vox did not win in Alcorcón — the Socialists retained their majority, and the scheme never went ahead. But the willingness to hold such talks in the first place showed something: for part of Spain’s political spectrum, folding a private security operation into a municipal budget had stopped being a fringe idea.
In 2023, ahead of the general election, a banner costing hundreds of thousands of euros went up on a building in central Madrid — a portrait of the prime minister against a Moroccan flag and an aeroplane, with a caption about moving to Morocco. In the summer of 2025, during unrest driven by anti-migrant sentiment in Torre-Pacheco, a company representative showed up on the scene in person — in a role usually reserved for the police and the courts.
Vox in Alcorcón was preparing to officially pay Desokupa out of the municipal budget for evictions — only the party’s election loss stopped the plan.
Complaints, Violations and Court Cases Against the Company
In January 2024, during an eviction in the town of Lalberco, company staff — according to a journalistic investigation — entered a property without a court order. The eviction was carried out on the spot, bypassing the legally required procedure: not the wait-by-the-entrance scenario the company describes as its standard practice.
Over the years, dozens of complaints have been filed against staff — threats, intimidation, overstepping their authority. Most of the high-profile cases went nowhere. The one genuinely confirmed conviction came in the summer of 2023, and it had nothing to do with violence during an eviction: it was for violating someone’s right to their own image, after staff filmed a person’s face on a phone and posted it online without consent. The fine came to €5,800 — the only penalty the state has managed to impose on people whose profession is built on intimidation.
In the summer of 2026, the situation turned around. The company’s founder was sued by a private plaintiff for publicly and falsely naming a young man as one of the attackers in an assault on a football fan. The tweets were deleted, but defamation and reputational harm lawsuits were filed anyway. A man who spent years accusing others of illegally seizing other people’s property found himself in the position of the accused — this time not over square metres, but over words.
A man who spent years accusing others of illegally seizing other people’s property found himself in the position of the accused — this time not over square metres, but over words.
Why the State Falls Short: Courts, Police and How Other Countries Handle It
Squatter-eviction lawsuits in Spain drag on for years — and that delay is exactly what fuels demand for private firms like Desokupa. Defenders of this business make a simple argument: if police could clear out squatters in two days, firms like this wouldn’t exist. The demand is real, but it isn’t universal — there are ways to solve the same problem without private crews stationed outside a front door.
Something similar has happened before in history. In medieval Europe, royal administrations couldn’t protect merchant caravans from bandits, so merchants hired private guards. The mercenaries worked fast, but over time they grew powerful enough that monarchs had to negotiate with them rather than give them orders. In today’s Spain, the private sector has taken over functions that belong to the police and the courts in much the same way — only instead of men-at-arms, it has a legal department.
Two neighbouring examples show that drawn-out court proceedings aren’t the only possible order of things.
- United Kingdom. Since 2012, squatting in a residential building has been a straightforward criminal offence, and police can arrest the trespasser immediately, with no months-long wait for a court date.
- France. A fast-track procedure applies: if a complaint about illegal occupation is filed within the first few days, the local prefect must issue a decision within 48 hours.
In neither country did a private security force at the door grow into a business sector of its own. Spain’s slow-moving system isn’t a law of nature — it’s a choice, and the entire commercial interest of the private-eviction market depends directly on that choice staying in place.
How Different Countries Handle Illegal Occupation of Housing
Table scrolls sideways
| Country | Spain | United Kingdom | France |
|---|---|---|---|
| Legal status of occupation | Civil dispute, courts take years | Criminal offence since 2012 | — |
| Speed of response | Months to years through courts | Immediate arrest by police | Prefect’s decision within 48 hours |
| Private eviction firms | A distinct industry | Never developed into an industry | Never developed into an industry |
What Property Owners Need to Know: Rights and Risks of Hiring Such a Firm
Hiring a private firm to clear a property rests on a set of fine legal distinctions, and the fallout from overstepping them doesn’t always land on the people who carried it out.
- Client liability. If a hired company’s staff use force or push too far in a confrontation, liability can fall not only on them but on the property owner as the client — in some cases, a court may treat the owner as an accomplice.
- Constitutional guarantee. The inviolability of the home is enshrined in Spain’s constitution.
- Who can’t enter without a court order. Neither private firm staff nor the police can cross the threshold of a home against the will of the person inside without a direct court ruling.
- Right to film. A person has a full right to record any conversation with staff from such a firm or with the police on video.
- Recordings as evidence. Spain’s Supreme Court has repeatedly confirmed that a recording made by a participant in a conversation is admissible evidence.
These five points serve as a practical anchor for both sides of the conflict — for the owner deciding whether to hire such a firm, and for the person on the receiving end of a visit: constitutional protection of the home and the right to record apply no matter who is standing on the other side of the door.
Any conversation with staff from such a firm or with the police can legally be filmed — Spain’s Supreme Court recognizes these recordings as evidence.
What to Know Before Hiring Such a Firm — or When Its Staff Show Up
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