Spain's government has lost key votes on emergency measures to tackle the housing affordability crisis MADRID -- Spain's progressive government was dealt a costly legislative defeat on Friday when lawmakers rejected a package of emergency measures aimed at tackling the nation’s housing affordability crisis, while protesters marched on the Parliament demanding help for renters. The setback sparked speculation in Spanish media that Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez could consider bringing forward elections from next year. His office did not immediately respond to questions from The regarding a possible snap election.
Sanchez spoke at the end of a five-hour parliamentary debate, making a last-gasp appeal to lawmakers to vote the measures that he called “necessary.” “What is behind these decrees is the desire to instill order and a sense of humanity in a market that if we do not rein it in will destroy our society,” Sánchez told the other 349 members. His plea fell on deaf ears. The Catalan separatist party Junts carried out its announcement made hours before that it would vote against both decrees.
That doomed the measures when combined with the “No” from the center-right Popular Party and far-right Vox. The votes were loudly jeered by protesters who had gathered nearby, while people seated in the public tribune of the chamber shouted “Vulture funds govern the congress!” The first of the rejected decrees included a package of measures the government said would stop evictions of vulnerable people, make real estate speculation harder and provide tax incentives to encourage renting. The second decree was intended to make residential leases automatically renewable by tenants.
The main protest group, the renters association Sindicato de Inquilinas, said it was calling for more protests on Saturday and pushing for a general strike. The government decrees were intended to quell a public uproar following the televised eviction of an 87-year-old woman last week in Madrid that sparked protests and a camp-in that has occupied Madrid’s most important square ever since. Outside the parliament, protesters held up homemade signs with images of vultures on them, denouncing the real estate speculators they blame for driving up prices.
Protester Carla Cremonte, a 34-year-old office worker, lamented that the right-wing parties had united to “vote against the interests of the majority of people who are here, of the workers of Spain.” “I don’t know what might happen, whether elections will be called, but in the streets we will continue fighting and the atmosphere is one of a general strike,” she said. The average rent in Spain has almost doubled in the past 10 years. The average price per square meter has risen from 8.20 euros in 2016 to 15.1 euros ($17.15) this year, according to the real estate website Idealista.
The elderly woman whose eviction sparked the protests, Maricarmen Abascal, has become a symbol for the fight for lower housing costs in the southern European country, where many people are priced out of buying a home and are being squeezed by a small rental market. The company that evicted her finally caved under immense public and political pressure this week and said that she can return to the apartment. Abascal is currently in a hospital since being removed from her home on a stretcher, but her lawyer said she is happy to know she will be going home.
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