Congress approves the first Housing Law with the right-wing and nationalists voting against

The first housing law for democracy was approved this Thursday by the plenary session of the Congress of Deputies, with the support of the Catalan and Basque independence movement and the rejection of Catalan and Basque nationalism (176 votes in favor-167 votes against). A paradox that aligns a left/right axis also in Catalonia and the Basque Country. The state right in full, PP, Vox and Ciudadanos, rejected the law as interventionist and inefficient, while the progressive formations, PSOE, Unidas Podemos, Más País gave it impetus, opposing the need to support the productive economy and regulate the unproductive, in in this case, real estate rentism.

The imminence of the elections has marked the final stretch of the approval of the law, seasoned by the announcements of increase in the social housing stock of the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, in recent weeks. Thus, while the PP has defended that the law is an attack on private property, Vox has only criticized its ineffectiveness, and Ciudadanos maintains that it is basically a regulation of a Francoist nature. And all three have opted, to solve the housing problem, for a liberalization of land like the one promoted by José María Aznar and caused the largest real estate bubble on the continent.

But the most interesting part of the debate was the one that pitted the nationalists against the independentists. After the vote on the amendments, PNV, PDeCAT and Junts appeared together at a press conference to explain the meaning of their vote. The spokespersons Aitor Esteban, Ferran Bel and Miriam Nogueras, respectively, spoke on behalf of their parties. “What unites us is the defense of self-government,” said Esteban. The jeltzale spokesman stressed that only two formations, ERC and Bildu, have aligned themselves in contempt of exclusive powers, because “the CUP has also denounced the invasion of powers and the BNG does not support the law either, it has abstained.”

“It is not a good law”, summarized Nogueras, who pointed out that the law will not be effective and “disavows the Government of Catalonia”. According to the Junts spokesperson, the Spanish government “has entered our house, and it does so without forcing the door, because that door is opened by Esquerra.” Bel added that PDeCAT has established positions these days on issues for which it has not received an answer. “If we have exclusive jurisdiction why we are approving a law, we establish the twenty purposes of public housing policies.”

The paradox is that the leader of the PP himself, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, appealed to self-government and powers to defend his no to the law: “When we hear the central government talk about housing without recognizing that public land is owned by the municipalities and that It is the communities that run the house, it is a lack of respect for public administrations ”, he said this Wednesday.

Both Pilar Vallugera, from Esquerra, and Oskar Matute, from EH-Bildu, denied such invasion of powers, and even the deputy from the nationalist party assured that, quite to the contrary, it improves the capacities of the regional and municipal administrations to face the problem of housing: “It is not a centralizing law, it is an enabling law.”