MADRID (AP) — Spain’s progressive government suffered a costly legislative defeat Friday when lawmakers rejected a emergency package aimed at tackling the country’s housing affordability crisis, as protesters marched to Parliament to demand help for tenants.
This setback sparked speculation in the Spanish media that Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez could consider bringing forward next year’s elections. His office did not immediately respond to questions from The Associated Press about a possible early election.
Sánchez spoke at the end of a five-hour parliamentary debate, making a final appeal to lawmakers to pass the measures he called “necessary.”
“What is behind these decrees is the desire to establish order and a sense of humanity in a market that, if we do not control it, will destroy our society,” Sánchez told the other 349 members.
“Do the right thing, or history will judge you, and sooner than you think,” Sánchez concluded before each lawmaker took a roll call vote.
His plea fell on deaf ears. The Catalan separatist party Junts carried out the announcement made a few hours earlier that it would vote against the two decrees. This doomed these measures to failure when combined with a “no” vote from the center-right and far-right People’s Party Vox.
The votes were loudly booed by demonstrators gathered nearby, while people sitting in the House’s public gallery shouted “The vulture funds rule Congress!”
These decrees followed public outcry over the expulsion of an elderly woman.
The first of the rejected decrees included a set of measures that the government said would end evictions of vulnerable people, make property speculation more difficult and provide tax incentives to encourage rentals. The second decree aimed to make residential leases automatically renewable by tenants.
The main protest group, tenants’ association Sindicato de Inquilinas, said it was calling for more demonstrations on Saturday and pushing for a general strike.
The government decrees were intended to quell public outcry over the televised expulsion of a 87 year old woman last week in Madrid, which sparked protests and an encampment that has occupied Madrid’s most important square ever since.
In front of parliament, demonstrators held up homemade signs with images of vultures, denouncing real estate speculators whom they accuse of being responsible for the rise in prices.
Protester Carla Cremonte, a 34-year-old office worker, lamented that right-wing parties had united to “vote against the interests of the majority of people here, the workers of Spain.”
“I don’t know what could happen, if elections will be called, but in the streets we will continue to fight and the mood is one of general strike,” she said.
The average rent in Spain has almost doubled in the last 10 years. The average price per square meter rose from 8.20 euros in 2016 to 15.1 euros ($17.15) this year, according to the real estate site Idealista.
The elderly woman whose eviction sparked the protests, Maricarmen Abascal, has become a symbol of the fight for lower housing costs in the southern European country, where many people cannot buy homes and are crushed by a tight rental market.
The company that evicted her finally relented this week under immense public and political pressure and said she could return to the apartment. Abascal is currently hospitalized since she was taken out of her home on a stretcher, but her lawyer said she was happy knowing she would return home.
It is unclear where the government will go from here. It could run on new legislation – unless, of course, Sánchez pulls the trigger on an election.
Catalan separatists undermine housing decrees
Junts is part of a group of small parties that Sánchez had to court when he formed a new government in 2023. Since then, she has proven to be a thorny political partner. Its leader, the separatist Carles Puigdemonthas resided in Belgium since fleeing Spain after leading a failed attempt to make northeastern Catalonia an independent nation in 2017.
Spanish Housing Minister Isabel Rodríguez appealed to Junts from the lectern, saying her ministry had “incorporated 90% of your proposals. Vote for the decrees or at least abstain.”
But Míriam Nogueras de Junts said the decrees would only lead to landlords removing their properties from the rental market, driving up prices even more.
“These decrees still allow speculators to buy properties and evict people,” Nogueras said.
Junts urged the government to negotiate amendments. The government refused.
“This is not a failure on all of our part,” Juan Bravo of the Popular Party told Rodríguez. “It is your failure and that of the entire Sánchez government.”
The center-right Basque Party and the small Coalición Canaria, whose support the government also needed, also voted against the second decree after supporting the first. They both criticized the government for rushing to act by decree instead of developing legislation with other parties.
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Wilson reported from Barcelona, Spain.
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