La Línea floating body was Mediterranean Hotel resident's; tenants' plight

GIBRALTAR/LA LÍNEA (Agencies/Photo: archive) The body found floating near the marina at the Western beach in La Línea last weekend belonged to a 31 year old Romanian who had been living at the old Mediterranean Hotel on the Rock (seen here in its former glory). The man, who worked in a Gibraltar restaurant, is believed to have banged his head and drowned after slipping from the boat he was staying on. As we have been reporting, the building that was once the hotel was closed as uninhabitable, forcing residents to be evacuated in December. Several were housed temporarily at hotels and other facilities, until Government support ended last Friday. Chief Minister Peter Caruana said Government had done its utmost to help residents of the structurally damaged building, and could do no more, as it is unable to flout rules in order to provide public housing to people who were not eligible. Many of the former residents feared being left homeless as the low rents they had been paying are impossible to find on the Rock's rental sector.>Some tenants who were on housing or social lists have been given government properties, while a handful of owner-occupiers have been given the option of buying in government-built co-ownership estates. The Ministry of Defence was also brought in to help two retired servicemen who lived in the Mediterranean Hotel.

But some of the tenants of the rundown building at Eastern Beach were not eligible for government housing, principally because they were from outside Gibraltar. They include a Czech couple with young children, and now face a dire predicament.

The Chief Minister also rejected any suggestion that construction work on the airport tunnel and the Eastern Beach refurbishment had undermined the structure of the Mediterranean Hotel. “All the clear engineering evidence is that this building is simply corroding,” he said. “It is a structure made of steel and it has not been maintained or serviced since the day it was put up.