“We have changed the meaning of the vote, but not our opinion.” With this phrase, the leader of Junts in Congress, Míriam Nogueras, tried to justify the last-minute turn of the party that reversed the process of the law to put an end to the abuses of seasonal rentals. The opinion of the heirs of Convergència has, however, changed in recent years in terms of housing: from supporting price regulation in Catalonia in 2020, those of Carles Puigdemont have come to reject intervention in the market, which led them to join PP and Vox. in the last votes in Congress.
The return of Junts to liberal positions contrary to housing regulations has been the turning point in the problems of all administrations to face the crisis of a right recognized in the Constitution. In the last five years, the Generalitat’s attempts to legislate have been met with a jurisdictional debate resolved in favor of the State and a housing law that was not approved until spring 2023. All this while rents have continued to rise in Catalonia and Barcelona in particular. Vacation rentals are the latest way to circumvent national regulations and cause more problems for tenants.
The influence of the CUP and ERC on parliamentary majorities during the process has sometimes led Junts to positions in favour of public intervention in the housing market. For example, the Catalan law on rent caps, approved in 2020 with the votes of the Junts, ERC, Comuns and CUP, was declared unconstitutional in 2022 and caused the first attempt at price regulation autonomy to fail.
No longer occupying positions of power, Carles Puigdemont’s party has a free hand to be the opposition in Parliament and Congress, although it facilitated the investiture of Pedro Sánchez. Three years after voting in favor of price regulation in Catalonia, Junts voted against the National Housing Law that legislated in the same sense. The neoconvergents’ excuse for rejecting the measure was the invasion of the powers of the Generalitat.
The jurisdictional argument also served Junts to vote against the decree that, in times of discount, the previous government of Pere Aragonès approved in Parliament to put an end to the excesses of seasonal rentals, a type of rental that traps tenants and serves to circumvent price regulations. According to Junts’ spokesperson in Parliament, Mònica Sales, seasonal rentals should be regulated, “but not like this.”
The decree promoted today by the tenants’ unions in Congress to put an end to the fraudulent use of vacation rentals and rooms has not been a success either, in the opinion of the residents of Puigdemont. More than their fundamental refusal, it is the negotiation methods of Junts (they changed the direction of their vote to reverse the process of the law when they knew that, if they maintained their announced abstention, the standard would be studied in Congress) that have infuriated the left-wing parties and social entities.
“We changed our vote when we were informed that with our abstention we were facilitating the approval of the law,” Nogueras acknowledged this Wednesday. The Barcelona Tenants’ Union responded with a demonstration this Wednesday afternoon at the headquarters of the party. “Junts has positioned itself as a puppet of the employers’ union and is a party that has no say,” said one of the union’s spokespersons, Enric Aragonès.
After a day in which the Government and the left-wing parties harshly attacked the Nationalist Party for its vote against the application of the law, the party leader, Carles Puigdemont, took to the Executive social network. Without any further reference to the housing problem other than a reference to a statement this Tuesday from Junts about the decree, Puigdemont wanted to focus on the Government: “Isn’t a decree, a law, an appointment being negotiated? So they can’t take our vote for granted.” The leader of the Junts did not explain his party’s change of vote in his speech in X.
Revolving Doors with the Real Estate Sector
In the debate this Tuesday in Congress, the person in charge of defending the position of Junts was Marta Madrenas, former mayor of Girona who, before entering politics, was a real estate agent (API) with responsibilities in professional command positions at the service of owners: she was president of the API college of Girona and vice-president of the Catalan API council between 2003 and 2010.
The head of housing policy in the Generalitat for a decade, Carles Sala, has taken the opposite path. Fourteen days after resigning as Secretary of Housing in the Government following the departure of Junts from the Executive, Sala signed as a member of the board of directors and spokesperson for the Association of Real Estate Agents of Catalonia (API). A similar direction was taken by the former Minister of Justice, Lourdes Ciuró, who, after leaving the government in 2022, was hired by the Association of Real Estate Administrators of Barcelona and Lleida as an advisor on institutional relations and communication.
Real estate signings among former politicians are not exclusive to Catalonia. Former Secretary of State for Transport Isabel Pardo de Vera ended up refusing to chair the Association of Rental Housing Owners (ASVAL), run by funds such as Blackstone and Ares, last December after the controversy surrounding the announcement of her signing. Before resigning, she was going to succeed former minister Joan Clos, who was also mayor of Barcelona, the city most affected by the excesses in seasonal rentals: up to 40% of the rental offer in the Catalan capital (48% more than a year ago, according to Idealista data), it is already this type of lease that escapes the price limit.
