Spain: Sánchez stands with the public over the housing crisis

Pedro Sánchez is standing his ground and has secured the government’s approval for two decrees on the housing crisis that are almost identical to the measures rejected last Friday by the right-wing parties (and the Catalan separatists of Junts) in Parliament. Early elections have already been scheduled for 29 November. The Socialist Prime Minister has resigned and decided to take on the People’s Party and the xenophobic far-right Vox party, defying the polls which show the left trailing by a wide margin.

And to win back votes, he is focusing precisely on the housing plan – the very issue that brought down the government – in an attempt to win over the protesters who, for weeks, have been filling the streets by the hundreds of thousands, demanding more affordable rents, an end to evictions and housing support policies for the less well-off sections of the population. “Parliament has chosen to turn its back on the people. But this government will never do that,” said Sánchez, attacking the right and launching his election campaign to “give the country the Parliament it deserves and continue the renewal of Spain with progressive policies”.

The measures approved by the outgoing government will come into force on a provisional basis upon publication of the decrees in the Official Gazette, and will subsequently have to be approved by the members of the provisional governing body that remained in office following the dissolution of Parliament: Sánchez is counting on having the majority needed to turn at least one of the two decrees into law. However, the government’s insistence on pushing through the housing plan even after Parliament’s dissolution has drawn criticism from the opposition and raised some concerns about the transparency of the process.

The two decrees provide for a moratorium on evictions for vulnerable tenants; the automatic renewal of existing tenancy agreements; restrictions on short-term lettings; funding to facilitate mortgages for first-time buyers; and very strict limits on the purchase of residential property by investors whom the government has described as fondos buitre, or ‘vulture funds’. In short, they mirror the ‘Maricarmen’ measure, named after Mrs Maricarmen Abascal, aged 87, who has become the symbol of the street protests after being forcibly evicted from the flat in Madrid where she had lived for years.

“There are many Spaniards waiting for solutions; many millions of citizens expect the institutions to have the courage to stand up to the powers that be,” explained Sánchez, who has governed the country for the past eight years. “The two measures protect the most vulnerable groups and begin to bring order to a market that is currently deeply dysfunctional and dominated by speculation.”