The vice president of the Generalitat Valenciana, Susana Camarero (Madrid, 1970) is a woman experienced in matters of equality. Current Minister of Social Services, Equality and Housing, she was Secretary of State for Social Services and Equality (2014-2016) and later president of the study report on the State Pact against Gender Violence.
With powers in housing, the big problem facing families and young people, he is responsible for Equality in a government in coalition with Vox. Despite the attacks of the ‘ultras’, Camarero defends the unity of action of the Consell against violence against women. “What the left has achieved in recent years with radicalism is to separate feminism,” he declares.
Two building fires in a few days, with many deaths. Is your department considering auditing buildings built with technology similar to Campanar’s?
In the Campanar fire there is a judicial investigation underway that must determine what happened, what the construction materials were, where the fire started and what form of construction, and regulations, was planned. The case of Vila Joiosa is radically different; The fire was limited to a home. That is why it will be based on the conclusions of the Campanar instruction when we will be able to adopt measures, without alarmism.
But those conclusions will take time to be known.
Of course, that is why we have created a commission of experts including the Dean of the College of Architects of Valencia, the Dean of the College of Technical Architects, the president of the property administrators and the Valencian Building Institute (IVE). Last week we met and what was decided was to establish a telephone number so that those people or experts who have questions about buildings can consult. And it will be these experts who, when we have the judicial conclusions, will say what measures to adopt.
Will this commission of experts submit a proposal to the Consell?
Evidently. I already told you that with that telephone we are going to carry out a “mapping” of homes that may have this type of ventilated facades in the Valencian Community and make decisions. We found a lot of collaboration.
Many families have been relocated to public housing. Can this solution be sustained for a long time?
With those affected in Campanar it was an exceptional situation and the reaction has been to adopt extraordinary transversal measures, from economic to housing. They will be there for a period of three months, they will be able to stay there for that time or use the economic resources at their disposal for a year to look for an alternative.
Will the Generalitat Valenciana apply the options of the Government’s Housing Law to limit prices in stressed areas?
We are totally against the Government’s Housing Law and against increasing prices. First because it has not worked where it has been applied, also because we believe in freedom, not in control. Our solution is to put homes on the market and we have planned 10,000 this term compared to none in the eight years of the Botànic. Prices have risen 90% for rent and 50% for sale in one year, and the reason is because there are no homes, because due to the lack of supply, prices increase.
Do you believe, as the employers’ associations claim, that the new Housing Law prevents small owners from putting their house on the rental market?
The thing is that the new law punishes homeowners, creates legal insecurity, causing them to retain them instead of encouraging them to put their home on the market for rent or sale. We are not in favor of supporting squatters, as proposed by the Government law, against the owners. We cannot provide the right to housing if we do not put housing on the market, that is the solution.
Building 10,000 homes is not an easy challenge. How are you going to do?
We are in contact with the municipalities to inform us and identify land for construction of protected housing. These are homes at affordable prices for predetermined family profiles. We are modifying the VPO decree to clarify the construction conditions and we want promoters, public-private collaboration. For rent and for sale. We will establish the price framework and the conditions of who can qualify for them. They are rules agreed upon with the sector.
Only 1% of new home buyers last year were young people between 20 and 30 years old.
Young people are our priority, and we have already demonstrated it, because we have acquired homes exclusively for them. Among those 10,000 homes there will be a reserve only for young people and we are approving loans and guarantees through the IVF so that they can qualify for a home. If young people cannot access housing they cannot emancipate themselves and that brings the added problem of the demographic challenge.
Another serious problem is the effects of gentrification and touristification that are expelling residents from their neighborhoods. What measures do you think should be adopted to alleviate this reality?
We are in contact with the entire sector to observe the measures that can be adopted to avoid the negative effects of tourist apartments. What we will do will be a regulatory modification because we have found a regulatory dispersion that causes legal uncertainty for owners, promoters and investors. And it even made it difficult to build new homes, which would also help reduce the presence of tourist apartments.
European funds should also be used for rehabilitation, but as we reported in this newspaper there has also been a certain collapse for two years. What situation is it in?
In both housing and social services we have encountered a stoppage in the management of European funds, and in fact I have had to return five million euros of these funds in social matters because they had not been executed, and this is very serious. That was the management of the Botànic. We have expanded the team to manage these funds and we are in contact with the Government to help us execute, because it also depends on them. A lot of time has been lost and now we must run hard to avoid losing a single more euro.
The previous Consell applied the measure of right of first refusal and withdrawal for public housing. You initially disagreed, but the Constitutional Court did not accept the appeal. In what position is the measure now? Will they apply it?
We apply the law, but it is surprising that the left takes the medal, but they never applied it with all the modifications they made to the decrees. They say that thanks to this law it has been possible to provide homes for those affected by the Campanar fire, but those homes were purchased by Mayor Catalá.
In social welfare, we recently published the alarm that your Ministry had about the lack of foster families. What is the situation?
Minors cannot be in sheltered centers, not because the law says so but because of common sense. The problem is that we have found that we had not worked in eight years on caring, promoting, having foster families, and now we are preparing promotion campaigns because there is a lot of ignorance in foster care.
Regarding immigration and minors, you have expressed your complaint about the lack of information from the Government regarding how minors are distributed when they arrive in Spain and about the lack of resources to take care of them. Is that so?
Not only is this the case, but I find it outrageous how the Government of Spain is treating the issue of immigration of minors because we have found, due to the Botànic government, that there are not enough places to meet the demand, and therefore, in When there is an arrival of minors, as in recent weeks, they arrive and are welcomed in our reception centers, which were stressed and are now overwhelmed.
Are they collapsed?
We are constantly looking for solutions to prevent the situation in the centers from further complicating and looking for new places. The Government of Spain, faced with the migratory crisis in the Canary Islands, has transferred groups of adults to the peninsula and among those elderly, minors have entered, and there are more than fifty in our Community who have entered through that route. All communities are repeatedly telling the Government, but the Government is looking the other way. The situation in which this country’s immigration policy finds itself, which should be State policy and European policy, is outrageous.
You have insisted a lot on the importance of education to facilitate the reintegration of minors who have committed crimes, for example, sexual violence.
With the juvenile centers there are two problems: one, how the centers are, both in number of places and in maintenance, which is already being worked on; and secondly, in the operating protocols, which concern me much more. There are socio-educational centers managed by the Administration and others of public-private collaboration, and we have a lot to learn from how some entities, which work really well, develop it.
We are in the week of 8M. There have been months of confrontation with the opposition over the concept of “gender violence”, mainly, and over its shared management with Vox. What position does the Consell defend?
There have not been any management problems, starting with the President who decided that I should be the one to occupy this responsibility, with a career that supports my status as a feminist. I think there has been a lot of noise when the government was formed, a lot of noise on the part of the left that has tried to use, manipulate these issues and sell to society that a government was coming that was going to turn its back on women and after these something More than seven months it has been shown that, far from being a government that attacks or vetoes women’s rights, we are a government that is working every day to improve women’s rights and we do so without using women.
Has there been interference from Vox in the construction of the discourse against sexist violence?
In matters of violence against women or gender violence, in the end the name is not the most important thing, the most important thing is what we do and how we do it. We have created a new figure, that of the Commissioner, which did not exist with the previous government, therefore we have reinforced the policies to combat violence against women, we have increased the budget, we have put out to tender the 24-hour centers, centers that had five years without bidding. Do we have to remember that this is management? We are working on an anti-trafficking strategy, developing measures against sexual violence and working with minors. There is a unique, determined management, without doubts of the need to continue advancing women’s rights.
One last question. It is a debate that even on the left generates large bills: that of prostitution. Within the left there are two lines of thought and this division is also observed in the demonstrations. How do you position yourself in these two debates?
What the left has achieved in recent years with radicalism is to separate feminism, a feminism that had always followed the same line, even with disagreements, and that sought to improve women’s rights at a time when it was necessary. Regarding prostitution, for me it is mostly trafficking and therefore it is what must be fought. I promoted the State pact in 2017 and within the pact one measure was to approve a comprehensive law against trafficking, but we are in 2024 and there has not been a law nor have those policies been developed. Every time there is talk of corruption in the Socialist Party, prostitution is involved. I don’t know if that has anything to do with the fact that those policies haven’t been developed.
How do you raise this debate in the management of minors?
There is an involution in how they relate to each other and I believe that we must work on healthy relationships between our young people. The most worrying thing is that young people are being introduced to sex through pornography. We have to work on raising awareness and also on educating our girls because they are accepting behaviors that those of our generation would not accept.
