Sunday’s demonstrators in favor of decent housing at affordable prices expect nothing from the right, but they expect more, much more from the government of Pedro Sánchez. For example, the promotion of a colossal stock of social housing
Accommodation in Spain: fundamental right or inaccessible luxury?
No, ladies and gentlemen of the right, the market does not solve everything. With the noisy Ayuso in charge, you pontificate that public intervention in the housing market would not be able to contain or reduce the exorbitant prices of rent or the purchase of an apartment by our children. They predict that, on the contrary, they would raise them. And I say to myself: the politics of Let it happen, let it pass, the world itself passes of Ms. Ayuso to lower or, at the very least, moderate these prices? The answer is obvious except for the undoubtedly numerous fans of the queen of vermouth: a categorical no.
The right boasts of governing the majority of municipalities and autonomous communities in Spain, but I have not read anywhere that real estate prices have fallen in Madrid, Malaga or Valencia. Quite the contrary. And it is precisely the municipalities and autonomous communities that are responsible for directly and almost exclusively managing this matter, which has always seemed risky to me. I do not see decentralization, or even federalism, incompatible with the fact that the central government reserves executive powers in the face of health, education and housing crises.
Ayuso even boasts of not applying in Madrid the housing law approved by the Spanish Parliament last year. Wow, a party of order encourages insubordination, contempt and rebellion against representatives of national sovereignty! I guess it’s because the saying “the law is the law and we are all obliged to respect it” only applies to Catalans.
I took part in the citizens’ demonstration on Sunday which brought together tens of thousands of Madrid residents to defend the constitutional right to decent housing at affordable prices. I am the father of two daughters who, despite having a permanent job and a decent salary, cannot rent a 30 square meter apartment in the Spanish capital, let alone buy it. So, near Cibeles, I warmly greeted a young woman who was walking with her head covered by a sort of cardboard niche. “The only roof I can afford,” said the banner with which the young girl explained herself. Well yes, I have heard similar phrases from my daughters in recent years.
Ladies and gentlemen of the right, the market does not solve the housing crisis in Spain and it will not do so either. And believe me, this is a very real and serious problem, an anxiety that affects the daily lives of millions of young people and that of their parents. The housing crisis is not one of those ideological, imaginary, absolutely ghostly hoaxes that you put on the table of public debate. As if ETA was more alive than ever – what a majaderíhas– or the amnesty will break Spain.
This crisis is one of those that affects food and requires urgent and massive intervention from the Spanish State. To fight against the epidemic of tourist apartments. Put limits on rents. Promote the immediate construction of hundreds of thousands of social housing units. The urgency and intensity of such an intervention must correspond to that of a national state of emergency. Because if covid threatens the death of our older or vulnerable compatriots, the inability to have their own roof will ruin the lives of our young people and sour the last part of their parents’ lives. Who can leave the retirement home, who can share their intimate life with their partner, who can have children if a hideout costs more than 1,000 euros?
This is where the government of Pedro Sánchez takes a risk. It is not excluded that the indignation of Sunday’s demonstration will eventually give way to a new 15 million rent strikes, sit-ins in the squares and continuous marches, a protest which would undermine the fragile government majority . I spoke with a number of my fellow protesters and they expected nothing from the right. They knew that their nature was to be with the multi-owners, with the vulture funds, with the Venezuelan millionaires. That’s why they’re right, dammit!
But from a government which claims to share the idea that housing is not only a matter for some, but also a right for all, it expects more, much more. Not simple rental assistance bonuses that landlords end up pocketing while they continue to increase prices. They hope, for example, to boost a colossal public stock of decent housing at fair prices. One of the messages on Sunday read: “You are the government, stop tweeting.”
