Junts will overturn the two housing decrees if Pedro Sánchez does not withdraw them sooner and avoids the vote scheduled for this Friday in Congress. This was decided by the group led by Carles Puigdemont in an extraordinary meeting of its executive that took place tonight.
The independence party has urged the President of the Government to withdraw the current decrees and approve other regulations in a new Council of Ministers that can be validated next week in the Cortes, if it aspires to obtain their affirmative vote and manage to regulate the housing market after the social and political crisis unleashed as a result of the eviction of Maricarmen Abascal. A proposal that is rejected by the Executive. They are not going to withdraw either text. Order on the table. From pressure to pressure.
"We have worked on them for months to accommodate the vision of the different parliamentary groups and build a consensus that lives up to the demands and needs of citizens," explain government sources. The slamming of the door by Junts is more than a splash of cold water for the Government, as demonstrated by the fact that after these days the ministers were careful not to expressly mention Junts and send messages veiled through criticism to those who opposed, now the unrest that exists is no longer hidden.
The wound hurts, and Junts is integrated into the right-wing package: "The time has come for PP, Vox and Junts to portray themselves and demonstrate whether, in terms of housing, they are with the citizens or with the speculators. With the middle and working classes or with the elites." The challenge is on the table. In contrast, they praise the "responsibility and commitment" of ERC, EH Bildu, PNV, Podemos, BNG and CC for having announced that they would support at least the most extensive document that contained practically all of the measures.
From Junts they argue that the current decrees "will cause the opposite effect that they intend" by "reducing the supply of rental housing, increasing prices and making access to housing even more difficult for people with less economic capacity."
Furthermore, they criticize that the current wording "does not stop vulture funds", that "they may continue acquiring homes and promoting evictions of vulnerable tenants", that "the protection of vulnerable tenants is not adequately resolved because payment by the Administration is not guaranteed" and that "certain measures involve the expropriation by decree of the savings of three generations of families", by opening the door for tenants to buy the home before it passes into the hands of the heirs.
Junts started the week being optimistic about the possibility of reaching an agreement on housing with the Government. There were two pillars of his proposal: suspending evictions from homes owned by vulture funds and prohibiting these funds from acquiring new properties, and deducting rental and purchase taxes from personal income tax, with a 15% deduction for habitual residences and for a maximum value of 11,630 euros per year. Neither of these two measures ended up being included in the Government decrees in the terms required by the neoconvergents: the Executive only establishes a temporary veto until December 31, 2028 for the acquisition of homes by vulture funds and includes tax credits with requirements that are "too demanding" to be effective, in the eyes of Junts.
Sources from the party represented in Congress by Míriam Nogueras already told this newspaper within hours of making the decision to oppose Sánchez's decrees that they would not mind "burning themselves to defend Catalan families and homeowners", and pointed out openly that the Government "lies" when publicly defending that its recipes will end the housing crisis in Spain. The pro-independence party was being pressured by the Catalan business community, which Nogueras already tried to reassure on Thursday night by assuring the representatives of small and medium-sized businesses that his party was not willing to give in to pressure from the streets.
