Government negotiates a minimum housing decree to avoid the bus and ensure support

The Government is trying to close a housing decree against the clock that pivots on the two main proposals made by Junts to lend its support to the norm: the prohibition of evictions in vulture fund properties and tax relief on rentals and purchases. According to sources familiar with the negotiation to EL MUNDO, these proposals enjoy "consensus" among the different political forces involved, despite the initial reluctance of ERC and Sumar for the group led by Carles Puigdemont to capitalize on the design of the legal response to the social crisis unleashed after the eviction of Maricarmen Abascal, the 87-year-old woman expelled from her apartment last week.

According to the same sources, the loose verse at the moment is Podemos, which continues to insist on including in the decree the expropriation of 650,000 vulture fund homes. This possibility is not contemplated by the formation that Míriam Nogueras represents in Congress, nor by other forces such as the PNV, so its inclusion would dynamite the majority necessary to validate the decree in the Cortes Generales after its initial approval in the Council of Ministers.

Faced with this unwanted scenario, which would multiply the pressure from the streets on Pedro Sánchez, the strategy of the Socialist Executive now involves focusing on carrying out this minimum decree that can be assumed by all the political forces involved in the negotiation and trying to displace the most extreme proposals towards other decrees with which to satisfy all parties, even if they are not finally validated by the Upper House due to lack of support. "But Podemos is not making it easy," point out voices that are part of the conversations about this strategy of Sánchez's Cabinet.

Any outcome that resembles the resulting decree to an omnibus decree with very disparate proposals will automatically be rejected by Puigdemont's side, negotiating sources insist. The general secretary of Junts, Jordi Turull, took a position in this same sense yesterday, warning Sánchez "not to mix housing, as he did at the time in the omnibus decree on pensions, with measures that criminalize the small owner."

The president of the PNV, Aitor Esteban, also stressed the need to seek a decree that establishes "a minimum common denominator among all", while criticizing those formations that "go to maximums", in a thinly veiled allusion to Podemos.

The leader of ERC in Congress, Gabriel Rufián, remains enormously belligerent against the possibility of the neoconvergents leading the way for Sánchez, but yesterday he was somewhat disavowed by the president of his party, Oriol Junqueras, who set the position of the Republicans by avoiding any mention of Junts or its measures. Junqueras was based on demanding Sánchez that this consensus decree include limits on seasonal and room rentals, the suspension of evictions of vulnerable people, the "end of the privileges of investment companies" or an extraordinary two-year extension to rental contracts that expire after the decree came into force.

On Sumar's part, the last to take a public position was the Minister of Culture, Ernest Urtasun, who on Friday opened the door to debate Junts' fiscal measures given the current "housing urgency." He did it before his party threatened Sánchez with a new plan in the Council of Ministers tomorrow if he does not come with a decree with the necessary support to be validated.