Every cloud has a silver lining. The 50,700 million that the PP government dedicated to buying toxic assets from the banks during the 2012 crisis, and which were so harshly criticized by the left-wing opposition, are now serving Pedro Sánchez and his allies as a strategy to win the general elections of 2023.
Therefore, the so-called bad bank, Sareb, is no longer so bad. On the one hand, it served to prevent the Spanish financial sector from declaring bankruptcy, and on the other, it has become the fundamental pillar of the social housing policy of the left-wing coalition government. In addition, it is the tool to legalize squatters.
The last thing that the then Economy Minister, Luis de Guindos, could imagine, when in 2012 he decided to acquire 200,000 assets from nine savings banks (Bankia, Catalunya Bank, Banco de Valencia, NovaGalicia, etc.), was that he was contributing effective in making Pedro Sánchez’s housing policy a reality. That operation tried to remove from the balance sheet of the banks the credits that had been recklessly granted to the promoters. Only 20% of the assets purchased were real estate, apartments, premises, rustic land without reclassification… all of them unsaleable.
The conservative government of Mariano Rajoy acquired those assets above the market price, although well below what the entities had recorded on their balance sheets. Why was he so generous? Because the objective was simply and simply to avoid a “bank runâ€. The entities that were intervened by the Fund for Banking Restructuring and Regulation (FROB) could not stop paying deposits to their customers. That would have dragged not only the Spanish but also the European banks towards the crash.
This was the reason why the financial system was intervened. Spain received a credit of 100,000 million that Spain would have to repay in the long term with a low interest rate. Spain could not be allowed to fall like Greece, since it was the fourth largest European economy.
The formula used was the same as that used in other developed countries. Create a bad bank that would take over all the bad loans and all the unsalable real estate assets so that those entities could get afloat. A rescue operation agreed with the big banks.
The objective for which Sareb was created was not to use those homes to articulate a social policy. It was a matter of recovering what could be so that the bank’s rescue bill would not be so expensive for the taxpayer. In these ten years, Sareb has done what it could. Nearly 14,000 flats ended up in the hands of squatters and vulnerable families. The Executive now intends to put a symbolic rent on squatted homes, which some will not even be able to pay.
Another 20,000 homes already built and whose ownership has been jealously hidden from public opinion to prevent their occupation have been offered to the autonomous communities and town halls. So far they have not shown much interest. The reason is that these are very deteriorated houses. In addition, they are found in places where there is little demand; And as if that were not enough, the autonomies are not willing to pay for them, another thing is that they give them away.
The Sareb, which has an expiration date of 2027, has helped Sánchez to make an express electoral proposal, which together with his Housing law can give him many votes, although it can also create a problem in the medium term for future governments.
