The housing decrees are rejected in Congress after the opposition of PP, Vox and Junts

The housing decrees arrived yesterday in Congress with the die cast. The PP and Vox had announced days ago that they would vote against. And Junts finished clearing up the mystery on Thursday night, when its National Executive decided to reject the two texts and demand that the Government withdraw them to start again. Early yesterday, therefore, the two initiatives were politically dead even before the Minister of Housing, Isabel Rodríguez, and the head of Social Rights, Pablo Bustinduy, took the stand to defend them. But in parliamentary politics even a corpse can cause war. And the decrees they gave it. A lot.

Outside, hundreds of people who had been camping in Puerta del Sol for almost a week gathered to remind the deputies that housing was no longer just a legislative issue. Inside, the Government, allies and opposition fought a battle that was more of an electoral campaign than a parliamentary process. And at the center of everything was Junts, becoming the main target of criticism for having decided not to give in to texts that, according to the post-convergents, are “poorly formulated” and “will aggravate the problem they seek to solve.”

The plenary session ended as planned. The first decree, with protection against evictions and temporary and room rentals, fell by 178 votes to 172. The second, with contract extensions and compensation mechanisms, did so by 184 to 166. PP, Vox and Junts voted against both. And in the second the PNV and the Canarian Coalition (CC) joined.

But the fight had started long before the votes arrived. Even before the plenary session began, Sumar deputy Alberto Ibáñez and PP spokesperson Ester Muñoz raised the tone to unusual levels in the Congress courtyard. Ibáñez reproached the popular people for their decision to overthrow the decrees. Muñoz responded by accusing the Government of having not offered sufficient solutions to the housing problem for eight years.

The bulk of the reproaches, however, had another recipient. Junts, aware of what was coming, tried not to simply say no and announced first thing in the morning that it would present its own proposal to the PSOE to make it the starting point for a new negotiation. But the offer boldly presented by Miram Nogueras found no interlocutors.

The Housing Minister was the first to try to prevent the shipwreck. Rodríguez went up to the podium knowing that he had little margin and that Junts' decision seemed to have already been made, but he wanted to rush the possibilities of agreement until the last minute by reminding Carles Puigdemont's team that the Government had incorporated a good part of their demands into the text.

Then Pablo Bustinduy arrived. The Minister of Social Rights defended the second decree with an intervention with fewer calls for negotiation and more warnings. “The people have memory and will remember those who have betrayed them,” he launched from the stands.

But the plenary session still had in store the harshest clash of the morning between Gabriel Rufián and Miriam Nogueras. Between ERC and Junts.

Nogueras was the first to go up to the stands. The Junts spokesperson avoided personalizing the confrontation with ERC and directed her attacks at the investiture bloc and, above all, at the Government, which she accused of “feeding lies and false hope” with decrees that, in her opinion, will not solve the housing problem. “We have the responsibility to tell the truth, whatever the price to pay for doing so,” he defended.

Rufián spoke later. And he did turn his intervention into a challenge to the position of the post-convergents. He went up to the platform with a 50 euro bill and some keys to a house in his hands. “This is your flag, this is your estelada,” he said as he raised the bill towards the Junts bench. “It's this one or this one, there's no more,” he added, pointing alternately at the money and the keys. For the Republican, the Junts vote did not respond to the needs of the families, but rather to interests that, as he denounced, would end up “harming thousands of Catalans.”

And then he asked the question that had been floating in Congress for days. "If just 48 hours ago the decree was still the subject of negotiation with Junts, why were they now going to vote against it? Who called who?" he asked.

From there, Sumar, EH Bildu, Podemos and ERC accumulated reproaches. Àgueda Micó, from Compromís, took them to the extreme: "The PP, Vox and Junts would even sell their mother for a caress from the powerful. Their homeland is the wallet. Dark times are coming." And he concluded: “Let the fight continue, this has just begun.”

PNV and CC, who had supported the first decree and rejected the second, marked their distance from the post-convergents so as not to appear in the same photo. “Despite the doubts, we will vote a critical yes out of responsibility,” said the Peneuvista spokesperson, Maribel Vaquero.

There was still room for one last letter. The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, took the floor to ask PP and Vox to reconsider their position and, at least, abstain. “If not, history will judge them sooner than they believe and more forcefully than they imagine,” he warned.

The vote was by call, at the request of PSOE and Sumar. The idea was for each deputy to “portrait himself before the citizens.” When Ana Vázquez's turn came, from the left a sound was heard that imitated the pepper spray that the PP deputy had displayed the previous week. The result, however, was decided.

Although there was still room for another unusual image. When the defeat was confirmed, the PP did not launch into celebration as it usually does every time it manages to overturn a measure by the Executive. The situation did not go unnoticed and the ministers themselves reminded those of Alberto Núñez Feijóo. "Come on, don't be ashamed now of what you've done. Clap your hands," they snapped.

The defeat left, however, a second reading. Because, paradoxically, the parliamentary failure leaves the Government closer to a scenario that until a few days ago seemed less immediate, that of an electoral advance. In sectors of the PSOE and the Executive itself, they are beginning to consider that blocking the decrees could become an electoral incentive. In Sumar, just in case, they have begun to prepare that scenario and the space parties will meet tomorrow, Sunday, to analyze the different scenarios. Because, although the housing issue returned to the starting point yesterday, politics, driven by social clamor, is no longer exactly in the same place.