PP, Vox, Junts and UPN prefer that their votes serve to continue to fuel speculation instead of trying to stop it because no flag can compete with the heritage
Junts admits changing vote to overturn vacation rental law: “If we abstained, it was approved”
It is sad but logical that citizens despair after listening to fragments of certain parliamentary or televised discussions. It is more unusual for a member of parliament to take advantage of his intervention in the speakers’ gallery to remind his colleagues why they are there. EH Bildu’s deputy spokesperson, Oskar Matute, did so on Tuesday during the debate on the bill to regulate seasonal rentals.
“Citizens are fed up with this smoke, especially those who are desperately looking for housing and cannot find it. Because this is the main concern of citizens. Above the debates that fill this room for hours. This and no other is the main concern. And they will understand that all these people, when this debate comes up and is treated in certain terms, are raising something that goes against the very essence of democracy and public power: if public power does not protect me, if it does not defend me when I am in need, what is the use of public power? This is the reality,” Matute summarized.
The result of the vote confirmed the reality to which MP EH Bildu referred: The right and the extreme right rejected a proposal whose sole intention was to admit for processing a text emanating from the Union of Tenants and Tenants. PP, Vox, Junts and UPN prefer that their votes serve to continue to fuel speculation rather than trying to stop it.
Junts had explained that they would abstain, but three minutes before the vote, they announced to Sumar’s spokesman, Íñigo Errejón, that they would vote against and therefore reject the proposal. What had changed? That the PNV had confirmed its support for the treatment of the text and that it would therefore prosper unless Puigdemont’s camp aligned itself with PP, Vox and UPN. And that’s what they did. They didn’t want the proposal to be accepted and that’s why they went from abstaining to “no” at the last moment. No homeland can compete with heritage. It is nevertheless paradoxical (not to look for a stronger adjective) that Junts demonstrated just a week ago, on the occasion of the Diada, demanding “the right to decent and accessible housing”.
The seasonal rental offer in Catalonia represents 25%. A percentage that in the city of Barcelona is already 40%. When Junts wonders (if he asks) why fewer and fewer young people are declaring independence, he remembers the photo from this Tuesday at the Congress and perhaps he will find a good explanation there.
Turull tried to justify the change of vote to X by invoking a violation of powers. An argument that is not supported given that when a similar regulation was debated in Parliament in May, it also rejected it. In that case, Junts stood, as today, alongside the rest of the right: PP, Vox and Ciudadanos. Moreover, that day, the PSC abstained and that is how the decree of the Generalitat approved a month ago to force owners to specify and prove the purpose for which the seasonal home is rented fell. Another example of the swerves taken by the PSOE and the PSC.
The absurdity of Junts is even greater, if possible, if we take into account that at the same time as they were overturning the attempt to regulate seasonal rentals, those of Puigdemont were promoting the new modification of the Penal Code to toughen sanctions against repeat offenders, a recipe that even judges and lawyers warn does not guarantee a solution to the problem. For the housing problem, regulation is not valid, but against theft, it is? In addition, the two votes were only the beginning of a parliamentary procedure that would have allowed the arguments to be heard and confronted for weeks.
Neither was a final vote, but Junts chose to perpetuate housing privileges and promote harsher security penalties.
In both cases, the underlying solution is indeed much more complex than a change in the law. There is a broad consensus among actors of all ideologies that the first thing to do in these two very sensitive issues is money and public investment. Money to significantly increase the social housing stock in Spain to bring it in line with the EU average, and money to create more courts to speed up procedures and reduce the saturation they suffer from. Money, social protection and the welfare state; not demagogy or populist solutions.
PS Among the smoke that Matute complained about, a proposal has made its way, aptly named “Unzúe’s miracle”. The former Navarrese goalkeeper and coach embarrassed the deputies last February when he appeared in Congress to demand a law that helps patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). “If there is one thing that we, the sick, do not have, it is time”, Unzúe explained after asking for will and a little empathy. His intervention helped to speed up the negotiations between the parties that finally reached an agreement to approve the law for the comprehensive care of these patients. This rule will make the difference between despair and dignity for the 4,000 people who suffer the cruelty of this deadly disease.
