Junts and PSOE negotiate a housing decree after the social impact of the eviction of Maricarmen Abascal

The open negotiations between Junts and the PSOE to approve a royal decree law that makes it possible to face the housing crisis that manifested itself starkly on Wednesday with the eviction of the 87-year-old woman Maricarmen Abascal already deal with concrete measures.

Sources from the Junts management tell EL MUNDO that the PSOE "sees positive" the proposals that the Catalan independence party handed over on September 3 to the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, in the form of a royal decree law, and that they hope to "receive in the coming days a counterproposal" from the Socialist Executive on which they can work to "make it possible for the royal decree law on housing to be validated in Congress."

The same Junts sources point out that, among the measures that the PSOE is already studying, "there are far-reaching issues" such as the "reduction of rent in personal income tax, the relief of mortgages, the relief of savings accounts for young people, as well as the suspension of evictions in homes owned by vulture funds or the prohibition of these funds from purchasing more homes."

There are also measures such as the possibility that people over 65 years of age who live in a residence can sell their former habitual residence without paying personal income tax on the profit obtained or that families can cancel the mortgage on their home if the bank with which they contracted it sells it to another bank for an amount lower than the amount that remains to be settled.

The Government seeks a way out to avoid a 15-M

The negotiation path between Junts and PSOE opens after the turning point and the social outcry caused by the harshness of Maricarmen's eviction. And the images of the old woman leaving on a stretcher, expelled from the house where she has lived for more than 70 years, have returned Spaniards to the trauma of the worst years of the crisis. When the dramatic images of families losing their homes flooded the newspapers and took over television programs. In reality, that collective wound never stopped bleeding. Only before it was in spurts and now it is drop by drop. In silence there are 4,000 evictions in the first quarter of this year alone.

Maricarmen's will later be added to that cold statistic, but due to the conditions in which it has occurred, this expulsion has caused the resurgence of a social clamor for housing that is reminiscent of the one that originated on 15-M. It is not a sporadic protest about this specific case, but there is a deeper connection with the anguish of generations of Spaniards who face every day a problem that has become the main concern of citizens. Housing is a black hole for millions of people who either cannot buy a house due to stratospheric prices or suffer every month to pay rents that devour their salaries and impoverish their living conditions.

This context is what has turned Maricarmen into a symbol. The one that is now persecuting a left-wing Government that during Pedro Sánchez's eight years in Moncloa has been unable to address a situation that has only gotten worse.

A sector of politics and civil society linked to Sumar and the alternative left has chanted its enough. And now it threatens to react in the streets and redirect the protests over the Maricarmen case against the Government if there is no immediate reaction in the form of measures. He has broken into Ada Colau, emblem of the leaden years of evictions and then elevated to mayor of Barcelona, ​​to warn that if answers do not come, the first thing that has to happen is the breakup of the coalition government with the departure of Sumar so as not to be "complicit" in the "cowardice of the PSOE." "It's over," says Colau.

All this pressure in the last few hours on Sánchez to take measures is being so strong that even Moncloa admits that Maricarmen's eviction is "a turning point", and that it is "evident" that society "requires answers" in terms of housing. "It doesn't matter what the game is," because it covers everyone.