Away with the rent! A little apartment for all Spaniards

From cheap houses, worker colonies, the Urban Leasing Law of the Republic and the rent reduction decree of the Republic to the construction of an urban middle class that would support industrialization, the development of the tertiary sector and, above all, everything, social peace. These were the great postulates of the social emergency and housing plans of Madrid, Barcelona and Vizcaya promulgated between 1957 and 1959 and of the Land Law of 1957 and the Horizontal Property Law of 1960, without which developmentalism could not be explained and the spanish miracle

The country was in a moment of effervescence and the Regime adopted a measure that would end up changing the traditional social structures by creating a Ministry of Housing that would assume the functions of the National Housing Institute and the General Directorate of Devastated Regions to take a new step in its policies, leaving the initiative to private companies and facilitating the acquisition of low-cost flats both for the citizens of large cities and for an overflowing rural emigration.

This is what the Prime Minister of Housing, José Luis Arrese, who had failed as Secretary General of the Movement in his struggle with the Catholic and monarchist sectors of the Government, advanced in a tribute paid to him by the associations of urban property agents in 1957 It was not for less, because the work of this group, along with registrars, notaries and, logically, developers and builders was non-stop from that moment on.

Home ownership, which at the beginning of that decade did not reach 50% of citizens, rose to 63% in a decade and exceeded 70% at the end of the dictatorship. The trend reached its zenith in 2001, when 82.2% of the Spanish population lived in a home they owned. The rent, on the other hand, fell from 51% at the beginning of the 1950s to 36.6% in 1970 and to 25% at the end of the Franco regime. It barely went back from the beginning of the 21st century

“You well know that one of the characteristics that I don’t know if they adorn or spoil my way of being is that of feeling horrified at any possible tribute. And I say that I don’t know if they adorn or spoil, because sometimes tributes are the product and breath of vanity, but sometimes they are a reason for rapport. Separating one from the other, knowing when they lead to the farce of applause or carry with them the embrace of brotherhood is an easy thing that can be seen in the eyes, in the air, and in the steps of men.

”No one confuses a military march with the merriment parade of circus comedians. For this reason, and despite the horror that these acts produce in me, I have accepted yours, and I would be insincere if I did not begin by saying that I am deeply pleased with your visit and your support. Because if all ministerial departments are in a certain sense the home of those who work and live in them, I aspire for this Ministry of Housing to be the true home, the true home of those who work with me; I aspire that the same restlessness, the same illusion, the same effort, fill us with mutual adherence, and a bond of affection bind us in such a way that in the end it is not possible to know when a tribute like this arises who is the one who pays it. offers and who is the one who receives it, so that we all have our part in the praises and in the merits.

”Your merit, real estate agents, lies in an essential way in the rhythm that you are printing to the work that corresponds to you. You are knowing how to arrive, thanks to the good piloting of Ángel B. Sanz, your president, at a coming of age that is surprising everyone because of how quickly it is offered, but, above all, because of the maturity that it shows in the exercise of transcendental task that you have in hand.

”One day I told you, and Ángel B. Sanz just remembered, what was the code of honor for your profession; Today I just want to point out to you, because Castile is also expanding as we go by, what is the next goal of the ministry and how we are going to need you so that you can once again lead the conquest.

”The mission that in a concrete way is entrusted to your daily work is to intervene in the real estate property transaction; but for this, for there to be a transaction, there must first be ownership; and look where, I repeat, we are going to need you more and more, because more and more clearly and without kinks we are going to promote private property.

”The Ministry has in its hands the most effective of springs: protective legislation, and it must use it so that all the houses that are built with state aid are oriented towards the fastest and most efficient system of access to property. We do not want, and we consider it an evil, although sometimes it is a necessary evil, for construction to drift collectively towards leasing, not even towards access to property when the deadlines are so far away that they destroy the incentive.

”Urban leasing or very long-term access may be an obligatory formula in certain situations of transit or indigence and, as such, a formula that the ministry must continue to practice, but the ideal formula, the Christian one, the revolutionary since From the point of view of our own revolution, it is the stable and harmonious formula of property, where that so logical and human goal is made possible, but until now reserved almost exclusively to the privilege of money, of achieving that housing be of the one who lives it.

“Our effort, the total effort of the ministry, will go forward, and let’s say it out loud and with a firm gaze, because we believe that this is the service to the common cause of achieving harmony for all in the peace of a home fixed and stable, it will be directed, I repeat, to consider that the limited income system has been overcome in order to reach the ideal stage of limited sales. Sale so that, through it, the quick access of the man to the property of what is most intimately linked to his own personality and to the existence of his own family is facilitated. Limited, to prevent someone’s disordered appetite from spoiling this encounter between man and his surroundings.

“Only in this way will we have taken a giant step on the difficult road of the social revolution, because revolutions – and I say this to many who confuse what they have as doctrine with what they have as violence – are not the negative and sad part of the war, but the positive part of the new thought that they bring to life, and our revolution, gentlemen, or rather, the parcel of common new thought that is entrusted to our ministry, consists in repealing the melancholic and transient sense of the man who walks through life without the right to reach with his hand the possession of the things that surround him and implant, like a hymn of glory, the roots of the family in the warm and friendly atmosphere of the home.

“We don’t want a doctrine that called the masses proletarian to get away with it, because it maintained that man in Christian society is capable of having only one thing without money: progeny; we do not want the property of the things most intimately linked to man to be outside of his own existence; We do not want a Spain of proletarians, but a Spain of property owners.

“And among all the efforts that a social doctrine such as the sample can and must make, born to raise man up to the physical and metaphysical dignity for which he has been created, none is more demanding or more beautiful than all Spaniards. they feel that they are owners of the home they occupy; of that home that is not only the four walls that make it up, but even the little story that is hidden in every corner and even the air that fills it with memories.

“Only in this way will we be able to say that we have given a different version of life and, ultimately, only in this way will we be able to say, with the voice of a flag that rises to the winds, that we have come to change the course that was pushing us into the communist abyss.

”With this way of outlining the future of home protection legislation, you will understand the importance that your profession is called upon to acquire. You are going to be, as I told you one day, the ones in charge of putting order and rigor in transactions; but, in addition, because they are homes, you are going to be directly in charge of bringing a new illusion and a new way of being to the lives of men; men and the spirit of the laws.

”Because your experience will be very useful when studying the legal problem that this new orientation contains, since the new formula for the horizontal property of buildings is directly derived from it and, consequently, the need to seek a statute of collaboration and understanding between the neighbors of the same vertical.

”This is the slogan of the present time: we have a position in combat and we have in the Caudillo a captain who guides us. Walk without fainting, without hesitation, so that one day, when the dawn of a more pleasant life has begun, we can proudly say that we have been sowing a part of the new joys.

”The anti-Spain is an old teacher in the art of slander and in the art of substituting real history for the black legend of lies. It doesn’t matter; truth is a transcendent quality of being and has the overwhelming force of its own evidence. And there is the truth, in view of the whole world and, above all, in view of you, real estate agents, notaries of everything related to construction.

”That they come to tell you if ever in the history of Spain, under any regime, under any economic prosperity, anything has been done that comes close to what we are doing in the midst of all the budgetary restrictions; Because of this Spanish truth about Franco’s effectiveness, which no one here dares to deny, because he is visible to all and is also making his way across borders.

”A few days ago the French Construction Minister told me, and a few months ago the real estate agents of the world gathered at the 9th International Congress held in Madrid; and in a few months you yourselves will have the opportunity to repeat it to all your colleagues who will meet at the tenth International Congress in Rome. In Spain there is no iron curtain or bamboo curtain. The doors of Spain are wide open to all who want to see our realities.

”Tell your colleagues around the world, then, what is the Spanish reality of the thousands and thousands of homes that our Regime is raising. And also tell them how this domestic policy in Spain does not develop within the cold bureaucracy of a purely technical ministry, but within the cordiality in which you, the minister’s collaborators, gather around him to encourage him in his task. .

”Presidents of the associations of property agents, for this sense of collaboration that you have been able to give to your presence; Due to this sense of adherence and help to the great undertaking that has been entrusted to us, I accept your homage, because only in this way, as I told you at the beginning, will this homage become a greater brotherhood among all of us who have the blessed opportunity to work for a better Spain.

“Go Spain! Long live Franco!”