The Minister of Social Rights and Secretary General of Podemos, Ione Belarra, has announced from Tarragona that her political space, Unidas Podemos, will soon register in Congress a law that seeks to enable a social responsibility fund, which would be “nurtured” by the banking sector, intended to cover possible mortgage defaults in Spain.
In an act together with leaders of En Comú Podem, such as the coordinator Jéssica Albiach, and of Podem (the coordinator of the Conchi Abellán party), as well as the candidate for mayor of Tarragona, Jordi Collado, Belarra justified the initiative for three reasons. The first, so that “avoid an epidemic of mortgage defaults” as a result of the rise in mortgages due to the inflation crisis. With this fund, people who can’t pay their mortgage will be able to “live a little better” and have “one last shelter, a place to go when they can’t pay it.” And also, because in his opinion it is time for “the banks to start repaying that bank bailout that they still owe us to the Catalans and to the people of this country” as a consequence of the previous financial crisis.
In her speech, the leader of Podemos recalled the 60,000 million euros that were injected into the Spanish banking system a decade ago as a result of that crisis, “60,000 million have to start repaying that fund,” she claimed.
Belarra has lamented the lack of courage of the socialist part of the coalition government in this area, who has been “demanding from the PSOE, almost begging” since September, that we do something with variable rate mortgages “, because “it is indecent for them to rise more of 200 euros a month”. That is why it has opted to carry out “a structural change to address the housing problem”, and given the scant attention to these demands, the purple party proposes a rule that has already sounded by the mouths of other parties, like the PP.
The Government has acted in this area, closing an agreement with the bank at the end of last year to alleviate the mortgage payment for one million households. The agreement allows a grace period of five years for incomes of less than 25,200 euros that dedicate half of their income to the mortgage, and freezes the quota for incomes of less than 29,400 euros with a 30% mortgage charge.
The matter has ended up in this electoral campaign. Alberto Núñez Feijóo proposed a month ago to “sit down with the banks” and create a “solidarity fund” to “help people who cannot afford their mortgages, either by converting variable mortgages into a fixed amount and extending the term, or well with other formulas with that banking solidarity fund”. But his proposal has not been translated into any legislative initiative.
Belarra has argued the need to “be able to give a better response to this crisis than the one we gave to the financial crisis” and has claimed the strength of his political space to make his government partner move: “This government has done more than any other, but without a strong United We Can and En Comú Podem, the harassment in this country does not change”. In other words, “Sanchismo without United We Can is equal to the policies of (Emiliano GarcÃa) Page and Fernández Vara.”
“Who defended that the minimum wage had to be raised? Who has defended feminist laws? Who is capable of enduring what Ada Colau endures for doing what she has done with the tourist apartments?”, she has vindicated. And in the case of these municipal and regional elections, Belarra has assured that “they have become a referendum on housing.”
Belarra also had time to express the embarrassment caused by one of the campaign images this week, the friendly slap from the president of Real Madrid, Florentino Pérez, to the mayor of the capital and candidate for re-election, José Luis MartÃnez Almeida . “I am embarrassed to see how Florentino Pérez, someone linked to the corrupt plot of the PP and CiU gave Almeida a smack in front of all the cameras,” she declared. The seriousness of the action rests, for Belarra, on “the relationship of trust that they must have to do something like this”, the “feeling of impunity” that it produces.
The leader of Podemos has pointed out that the scene “explains why they can’t stand us, why they can’t stand Ada Colau, En Comú Podem and Unidas Podemos, because “we can’t be bought”, has warned. Instead, the businessman “He is used to strategically placing people to do what he wants, who are little more than power lickers”, but “with us they cannot do it”, he has insisted.
