Spanish PM Sánchez loses key housing crisis vote after eviction of woman, 87
The defeat raises pressure on Sánchez to call a snap election, after a series of scandals affecting his party and allies.
**Spanish PM Sánchez loses key housing crisis vote after eviction of woman, 87**
Before suffering a heavy defeat, Pedro Sánchez made a last-minute appeal to allies to support changes to the law.
Spain’s Congress has turned down a package of measures intended to address the country’s housing crisis, dealing a blow to Pedro Sánchez’s government and increasing pressure on him to call a snap election.
Lawmakers voted on two decree-laws put forward by the government in response to nationwide protests that followed the eviction of 87-year-old Maricarmen Abascal from her home.
The decrees, which set out a range of measures designed to protect tenants in the rental market, needed parliamentary backing to stay in force.
MPs defeated the first decree by 178 votes to 172 and rejected the second by 184 to 166.
Hundreds of protesters gathered outside Congress during the debate, and scenes turned angry.
After the results were announced, demonstrators shouted “shame on you” and “your profits, our misery”.
The government’s defeat highlights the fact that Sánchez, a socialist, lacks a congressional majority and has intensified speculation that he could bring forward a general election, which was not due until next summer.
His embattled administration was already weighed down by a string of scandals and court cases involving his Socialist Party and close allies.
Maricarmen Abascal, 87, was evicted from her flat but later told she could return.
Abascal was removed after she could not afford a steep rent rise imposed by Urbagestión, the company that owned her flat in central Madrid.
Hundreds of protesters gathered last week to oppose the eviction, and the case sparked a wider movement across the country calling for affordable rents, which have risen sharply in recent years.
The public backlash led Urbagestión to negotiate Abascal’s return to her flat at a low rent. But protests have continued, with people occupying squares in Madrid and other cities, setting up tents in squares and planning a series of marches for this weekend.
Maricarmen Abascal’s eviction last week triggered protests demanding an end to the housing crisis.
The Sindicato de Inquilinas (Tenants’ Union), the activist group coordinating the protests, announced during the congressional debate that it was ending the tent protest in central Madrid. It said it wanted to “take the struggle to all the neighbourhoods, residential blocks and homes of Madrid, wherever there are rental increases, expulsions and abuses each day, and turn the energy of the last few days into a permanent organisation”.
Protesters are also demanding a general strike over the housing crisis.
The left-wing coalition government responded to the public anger by hastily drafting the two decree-laws in an attempt to calm the protests.
The first decree included a suspension of evictions of vulnerable tenants until 2030, a two-year extension of rental leases due to expire before 2028, tax rises for tourist apartments, and limits on the purchase of residential properties by what the government calls “vulture funds”.
The second decree was more contentious because it included the automatic renewal of rental contracts, a major demand of many on the left and of the Sindicato de Inquilinas.
The conservative People’s Party (PP) and far-right Vox had already said they would vote against both measures, leaving the minority government reliant on support from smaller nationalist parties in Catalonia and the Basque Country.
But by the eve of the parliamentary session, the centre-right, pro-independence Together for Catalonia (JxCat) had indicated it would oppose both laws, sealing their fate.
Friday’s debate was heated and at times angry, as supporters and opponents of the decrees clashed in Congress.
“I don’t ask you, I beg you to be brave and consistent,” Sánchez said moments before the two votes. “Because they are not just ambitious measures, they are necessary”.
He urged lawmakers “to put order and humanity into [the housing] market, because if we don’t, it will bring down our society”.
Social Affairs minister Pablo Bustinduy, from the Sumar alliance and junior partner in the governing coalition, framed the debate in dramatic terms.
“Today is about defending an international oligarchy which is extracting the rent from salaries earned with the effort of working classes of this country in order to share it out with dividends and they don’t even pay taxes in Spain,” he said.
“Voting against these decrees today means defending the interests of this oligarchy and turning your back on your own people.”
Miriam Nogueras, of JxCat, said the decrees had been rushed and lacked rigour.
She said the decrees “will allow [vulture] funds to keep buying, keep speculating and evictions to keep happening… these two decrees would provoke the opposite effect of what they aim to achieve.”
The political right has argued that government intervention will scare homeowners, discourage them from putting properties on the rental market and push prices even higher.
Juan Bravo of the PP said “housing doesn’t get cheaper with decrees, it gets cheaper with more homes”.