The new political course was launched with Alberto Nuñez Feijóo being accused of having “rented a cheap Moncloa to pretend to be what he is not, president of the government”. But as they say to the leadership of the PP, “if that is your criticism, we are doing well.”
Because what the popular leader’s team detects is that the party has put on the agenda a battery of social measures concerning migration, conciliation and housing who “were born to replace, as much as possible, a paralyzed government.”
But there is no change, as demonstrated by one of the initiatives which, for the moment, is kept in the Genoa offices. In the coming weeks, popular parties will register their own housing law. And in this package of measures appears an anti-squatter strategy which aims to “reverse the current situation of lack of protection of ordinary citizens against criminals who usurp their property. »
The national leadership of the PP has based its spirit on success Action manual against illegal squattingof the mayor of Badalona, the controversial Xavier Garcia Albiol. The 16-point document, to which this newspaper had access, combines the actions of administrative authorities, with police protocols and citizen collaboration.
The protocol
Above all, it is about achieving evict squatters from a recently raided apartmentin the first 24 or 48 hours, with direct intervention by the police, and “without judicial intervention”.
And if it’s a “consolidated” squatting“, a legal procedure scenario, with the support of public administration and legal adviceto speed up the expulsion of “usurpers” as much as possible.
This protocol was one of the electoral promises with which the popular politician achieved a spectacular victory in the last municipal elections in the Catalan city. Surrounded by municipalities dominated by the PSC and the Junts separatists, Albiol obtained 56% of the votes of their neighbors.
The squat problem is ambivalentvery serious where it is present, but not equally widespread in Spain.
This is why it is not part of the main discourse of the PP at the national level. But in Catalonia Yes, it is a social problem of the first order, because the region accumulates more than 50% of illegal squats from all over Spain. And that is why the PP focused less on the speech than on the measures of Albiol, who “faces the erroneous and failed policies of the ERC and the Commonswhich inspired the Sánchez government’s pernicious housing law.
For the moment, Badalona City Hall has managed to avoid a high percentage of new squats “which took place live”, explain municipal sources. “With clear instructionsthe support of the mayor and citizen collaboration, it is possible”, underline these sources. “The Urban Guard feels supported in their actions and this allows police reports to be much more judicially effective.
In addition, the change of regional government, with the departure of Esquerra and the arrival of the PSC, emphasize these local sources from Badalona, Collaboration with the Mossos d’Esquadra has also improved. The town hall is the only one in a large Spanish city to have a expressly dedicated advice in the fight against squatting and there is a single administrative window to facilitate procedures and provide legal advice to victim owners.
Adapting it to state legislation, the PP plans to include these measures in its social housing package in the coming weeks. The protocol provides for the authorization of a 24-hour telephone servicewhich is managed locally via 112. In addition, they include instructions for the owner -formally inform the squatters that they must leave-, to the police -indicate suspicions of usurpation in the report- and to the rest of the population the community to act as a witness.
The “simple procedures” that a community of neighbors can follow to “adopt the agreement of “Don’t let squatters in” in community areas if at any time they leave the building, even for a simple errand. “These common areas of course include enter through the goal of the community”, recalls the protocol.
Also explain this manual how to make life uncomfortable for usurpers, with instructions on how to do it have their supplies cut off. Especially, if they have hung illegally brought to light.
Autonomous competition
The PP recalls that the Housing skill is autonomous. And that the law of the State is nothing other than a fundamental law, which allows but does not require to the Autonomous Communities. “It is not possible for the government to threaten our autonomous executives”, warns a member of the Governing Council of one of the PP’s autonomy, “for not having applied voluntary provisions of their failing laws“.
His bill therefore actually aims to “overcoming” government legislation in the aspects “which proved unsuccessful” and into which he did not enter, like that of the squatters. Just when the debate is at its peak, because the minister of the sector, Isabelle Rodriguezthreatened the LACC which would not intervene in the rental market by not granting them financing.
There are those who accuse the Popular Party of having become “social democratic”. Even within their own ranks, there are those who do not understand the shift toward social policies that this second political direction of the legislature implies. But official management sources categorically deny this: it is a question of legislating “above a weak and paralyzed government”. in search of “improving the lives of Spaniards”.
If, at the moment, what has been announced are “easy sales” initiatives, this is due to two reasons.
The first, which “addresses the problem of conciliation is urgent» and it has already taken “a lot of time” to prepare the bill which will enter Congress “immediately”. And the second, because the strategy also seeks to facilitate the party the occupation of the center, “given that Pedro Sánchez went all the way to the left to kill Sumarwhich left the field open for citizens to identify us with measures with which, until now, it was more difficult for them to link the PP.”
Hence undoubtedly the strangeness and the comments, even critical, emanating from the popular ranks themselves: “We are going to confuse ours”, underline the most conservative wing. “On the contrary, we will expand our pool of voters, there will be more “ours”” replies a member of management.
“More and more citizens define themselves as belonging to a lower class, because this government does not address their problems,” he concludes, “and The owner of an apartment is not “a rich man”, but someone who supplements his pensionFor example, Sánchez points fingers at them, blames them and abandons them; we don’t.
