The vote of Junts against a law on tenants’ unions aimed at regulating seasonal rentals has caused significant anger among some government partners. Specifically between Sumar and Esquerra Republicana, who, with different arguments, have criticized the movement that the Catalan independentists made at the last minute, just three minutes before the vote, to take the initiative into consideration.
“For many, this will seem minor in this situation, but with its strategic errors, its pettiness and its narrow classism, Junts is fueling the anti-Catalanist prejudices present in a good part of Spanish society, including on the left.” Sumar’s parliamentary spokesman, Íñigo Errejón, wrote these words on Tuesday on his social networks, shortly after Carles Puigdemont’s party rejected the bill in Congress.
The vote only decided whether the Lower House would start implementing this rule, which seeks to plug the hole that, according to tenants’ unions, the Housing Law leaves for landlords. Vacation rentals are a subterfuge, they say, to get around the price limit imposed on housing by the text approved in the last legislature. In recent weeks, Sumar has been the group in charge of leading the negotiations to move things forward, although the proposal has also had the signature of other groups such as EH Bildu, Podemos or the BNG.
Until that same day, Yolanda Díaz’s coalition had negotiated with all the parties. Early in the morning, the result was still uncertain and sources within the group affirmed that they were fighting for every vote. The problem was the PNV and Junts. Those of Carles Puigdemont revealed in the morning the meaning of their vote: an abstention that opened the way to the “yes” as long as the group led by Aitor Esteban ended up supporting it. Finally, they voted and declared that they would give “critical” support to the text and that they would review it later in the amendment process. With the support of the Canarian Coalition, the vote was secured with a margin of one vote.
But three minutes before the vote, Errejón said this Wednesday, when announcements were already being made in the Lower House to call the deputies to the Chamber, Sumar’s spokeswoman received a call from Míriam Nogueras in which she confirmed that they would vote against. “We changed the vote when we were informed that with our abstention we were facilitating the approval of the law,” justified the Junts deputy this Wednesday in an interview with RAC-1.
“Yesterday, Junts made a strategic mistake, they voted with those who want to put them in prison, with the rentiers and with the big real estate companies against stopping rental abuses,” Errejón lamented this Wednesday in statements to the media in the halls of the Parliament. Congress. “It is important in life to have a word. It is important to stay true to your word because otherwise you will lose all credibility. Junts warned us when the siren sounded to vote. “It does not matter, we cannot give it much credibility,” he lamented several times.
In private, the leaders of the parliamentary coalition are still raising their voices and consider that what happened on Tuesday “has no name.” And they admit that this type of movement makes the votes in the Chamber even more unpredictable and they understand that they will have to work “triple” to obtain each initiative, even more so in an important autumn for the Government with the negotiation of the General Assembly. State budgets on the horizon
ERC: “A ghost haunts the Congress, that of the right and the extreme right of the PP, Vox and Junts”
The anger of this Wednesday was also seen in the Republican ranks. So much so that the spokesman of the ERC, Gabriel Rufián, took advantage of a question addressed to the president of the government, Pedro Sánchez, to ask him about the future of the legislature in view of movements like the one on Tuesday. “How long will this last?” the spokesman asked him.
The ERC thesis, which Rufián has been defending for some time in Congress, is the growing alliance between Carles Puigdemont’s party and the PP. Today he drew it in the following way: “There is a good book that says that a ghost walks through Europe. There is a ghost that crosses this room, the one from the right and the extreme right. PP, Vox and Junts.”
That is why he asked the government what it intends to do to avoid situations such as seasonal rentals. “You say that you will not dare, that you cannot follow those who hit the Catalans on 1-O and those who deny the Catalan nation. They are completely unaware of the capacity, the enormous media capacity to whitewash these people,” Rufián said, concluding: “What will you do? And don’t tell me what will happen in the Legislative Assembly. What would you think of a parachutist at 10,000 meters who claims to be able to parachute? Do you think he was a liar or an imbecile?” “This bloc is already formed and it will be free,” he said.
In statements in the halls of Congress, Podemos Secretary General Ione Belarra also focused his criticism not on Junts but on the government’s inability to attract Carles Puigdemont’s party to the investiture majority, a scenario that remained in the impasse, he said. diagnosed, when the PSOE decided to agree with the PP on the renewal of the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ).
“I believe that the problem lies in a government that is incapable of articulating a democratic and plurinational majority. When Podemos entered the government in the last legislature, no one believed in leading a state based on a progressive and plurinational majority, and it was a painstaking job, a job of dialogue,” he said. “Having given up on democratic regeneration, which was the common thread that was able to articulate this majority in July, has the consequence today that it is impossible to articulate this majority for anything else,” he added.
