Ione Belarra: “The only thing the Government proposes is a patch, a real joke”
The general secretary of Podemos, Ione Belarra, has called the package of measures proposed by the Government in the housing decree that it plans to approve this Tuesday and on which there is still no agreement between the partners as a “patch” and a “joke.” "People are saying that there have to be structural changes that allow us to put an end to speculation. The Government is not proposing a single structural measure, but rather the same old ones that no longer work after rents have risen by 40%, 50% or 60%," he said at a press conference in Congress.
"We have conveyed to the Government that it is out of touch with reality, that this decree is very far from what the people are asking for. As it is, there is no way to take it. It is time to continue promoting the mobilizations," criticized the deputy, for whom the Executive "copies Podemos's measures from five years ago." “Those measures were valid then,” added Belarra, who advocates expropriating the use of housing in the hands of vulture funds to incorporate them into the public rental housing stock and, in addition, lowering rents by law.
The party leader has also been against dividing the decree to achieve consensus on some measures. “We already know that when a decree is cut into pieces it is to drop the most ambitious part,” he rejected without clarifying what the position of his four deputies will be when the battery of measures reaches the Lower House.
Bilbao joins the mobilizations to demand solutions to the housing problem
Since last Monday night, a group of citizens has set up a camp in Plaza Arriaga in Bilbao to denounce the housing problem and demand solutions. With this protest, Bilbao joins the mobilizations that have been taking place since Maricarmen, an 87-year-old woman, was evicted from her home last week, which has provoked a citizen response with initiatives such as a camp out in Puerta del Sol in Madrid.
In the capital of Biscay, early this Tuesday morning a total of eight tents were installed in front of the Arriaga theater, an initiative organized mainly through social networks to demand solutions to the housing problem. The camping began this past Monday night, with signs that read “Stop vulture funds,” “All landlords are bastards,” “Maricarmen we are all” or “For the revolutionary strike, the right to decent housing now,” among others.
The participants, around a dozen people, have explained that they have organized this camp independently and self-managed and calls are being made through social networks, a WhatsApp group and by “word of mouth” for people to join this initiative. “We hope to fill Plaza Arriaga and we will be there until we can,” they stated.
According to one of the members, before Maricarmen's eviction the situation was already "unbearable" and, after what happened, "a point has been reached" in which the housing problem is "unsustainable" and "it seems that being a rentier is a right before being a human person with the right to have a house." Likewise, he explained that the participants in the protest are homeless people and, in their case, they live in a place without a occupancy certificate "because there is no house to live in" with their income. As he pointed out, this is now “an ultimatum” for the Maricarmen decree to be approved with measures to facilitate access to housing. As he has pointed out, we do not come to this life “to be slaves” who seem to want people “medicated, crammed into small, very expensive houses and in jobs with precarious salaries.”
"Life is not that. Life is not having a capitalist boss who oppresses you and a speculator landlord. Life is much longer and much more powerful. And people have to wake up once and for all," he added. Another of the participants in the protest has denounced that “what drags down” the housing problem is that there are salaries that “do not provide anything, that limit your life.” As he noted, he has been to 12 countries and has never seen one “more busted than this one” with “impossible” housing prices. (EP)
Àgueda Micó considers the housing decree the “last opportunity for the PSOE” to demonstrate its usefulness in the Government
Àgueda Micó, Compromís deputy in the Mixed Group, puts pressure on the PSOE and maintains that the royal housing decree is the “last opportunity” that this party has to “demonstrate that it is worth it for them to be in the Government.”
Micó assures that the socialists are “very comfortable” blaming the PNV and Junts for not being able to take more ambitious measures regarding housing. The post-convergents assured yesterday the distance of an agreement because they "accepted the occupations." The Compromís deputy encourages the PSOE to “be brave” so that these right-wing forms are the ones that “are portrayed” so that citizens “know who to vote for.”
Regarding the possibility of approving two differentiated packages of measures to ensure the approval of the measures that arouse greater consensus, Micó is against it and even raises the option of approving more royal decrees if this one fails in Congress.
A man with 87% disability and his family are evicted in Mataró (Barcelona)
This Tuesday in Mataró (Barcelona), a Mossos d'Esquadra unit carried out the eviction of a vulnerable family made up of seven people, including a man with 87% disability and three minors, one of them with autism.
The home, located in Ronda Cerdanya in the Cerdanyola neighborhood, belongs to an investment fund that, according to what the Mataró Housing Union has reported online, has refused to negotiate the permanence of the tenants, who had been renting residences in the property for 11 years.
The police have deployed several vans from 6:30 a.m. to the doors of the building to ensure the judicial launch, despite the concentration of neighbors and activists who have mobilized to try to stop the police action.
This is not the only eviction scheduled for today in the capital of Maresme, since at 10:00 a second operation is scheduled to evict another family on Colòmbia Street, in the Rocafonda neighborhood. As the same union has warned, this procedure also affects a family unit in a vulnerable situation with two minors in their care who do not have an adequate residential alternative from Social Services. (Efe)
The Tenants Union attributes the possibility of Mari Carmen returning home to social pressure
Valeria Racu, spokesperson for the Madrid Tenants' Union, has celebrated that Maricarmen, 87, can return to the house from which she was evicted. He has attributed this possibility to “the struggle, the collective organization, the popular power” and has rejected that the administrations or the property are responsible for the result: “They are parties to this conflict, rather they are guilty parties and directly responsible for this conflict.” As he stated, “they had refused to negotiate again and again, they had refused to mediate again and again, they had refused to offer an alternative time and again.”
Racu has said that the images of the eviction “lit a spark, a spark that will not stop” and that his first victory is that Maricarmen can return. “Of course, if she wants,” he specified. The woman will decide when she knows all the conditions of the contract.
Maricarmen's lawyer responds to Almeida: “The responsibility for making this possible lies with the union organization and the collective organization.”
Beatriz Duro explained that the negotiation of more than five hours with Urba Gestión, the company that owns Maricarmen's house, ended with a preliminary agreement so that the 87-year-old woman can return if she accepts its conditions. Although he acknowledged that the proposal came from the company, he recalled that "before yesterday they never wanted to negotiate or sit down with us." "The responsibility that this has been possible lies with the union organization and the collective organization," he stated.
Duro has said that now they will go to the hospital to read the contract with Maricarmen, who has not yet been given the news. “All the conditions must be explained to her well and she has to accept.”
Furthermore, the lawyer has addressed the Government before the press while the new housing decree is being discussed in the Council of Ministers: “The minimum that has to be done today is for the Maricarmen decree to be approved.” In his statement, Duro has charged against the public administrations, saying that “both local and state, are absolutely incompetent to respond to a very important social problem that is housing.” “Today you have an opportunity to legislate once and for all and begin to guarantee this right,” he stated.
Feijóo: “Eight years of wrong direction in housing will not be solved with this decree”
The president of the Popular Party, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, charged this Tuesday against the royal decree on housing that the coalition Government and its parliamentary partners are trying to agree against the clock. “The damage that this Government has done will not be repaired by the guilty parties,” said the leader of the PP in Terrassa (Barcelona), during the meeting with the Business Confederation of the Terrassa Region (Cecot).
“Eight years of wrong direction in housing cannot be solved with the partners' decree,” continued Feijóo, who has promised that if he reaches La Moncloa he will “face the problems” and that he will work to “recover the respect of politics with society.”
One of the problems in housing – a topic that has not been delved into – is the closure of investment. “It is not possible to build a million homes for supply if we do not believe in private initiative,” he said to question the star plan of the president of the Generalitat, Salvador Illa. “Nobody invests here if there is no legal security,” he added.
“In Spain there are 300,000 finished homes that cannot be delivered due to lack of energy power,” warned the head of the PP. “The Government is more prepared to reach an agreement among itself than to be able to deliver these homes,” he said. Neither Ascó nor Vandellòs can be closed. Without nuclear energy, the Catalan industry will not be competitive and there will be a setback for decades,” he stressed.
PSOE and Sumar negotiate in La Moncloa in extremis the housing decree and the delay council
The PSOE and Sumar ministers most involved in the housing decree, in particular Isabel Rodríguez, from Housing, who is leading the negotiation, and Ernest Urtasun, from Culture, are in La Moncloa finalizing the details of the agreement. The negotiation takes place in a room next to that of the Council of Ministers, which was scheduled for 9:30, but is being delayed until the agreement is closed, as has happened other times. On some occasions it even lasted several hours, with the other ministers waiting. The economic vice president, Carlos Body, and the minister of Social Rights, Pablo Bustinduy, also participate.
Sumar sent a counterproposal at dawn and is pressing hard, for example, to extend the anti-eviction shield from 2028 to 2030. But the PSOE has on the other side, in permanent contact by telephone, Junts and PNV, who put limits on these proposals.
The negotiation is very complex, but the pressure is so strong that all those consulted assume that there will be an agreement, although we still have to see how it is substantiated and if it has votes in Congress within a month.
Fifty people camp in Murcia
In Murcia, around fifty people have also camped out tonight, setting up around 20 tents in the Glorieta de España, where the city's Town Hall is located. The campers, coordinated by the Housing Union of the Region of Murcia and the Platform for People Affected by Mortgages, have displayed a banner with the slogan “Let's end the housing business”, and another that reads “Guilty renters, responsible government”.
One of the spokespersons for the Housing Union, Pablo Vidal, explained that the camp is going to withdraw throughout this morning, since the activists plan to coordinate this afternoon to try to stop an eviction scheduled for tomorrow in the municipality of Molina de Segura against a woman with two children, one of them, a minor and with a high degree of disability.
Tomorrow afternoon they have also called an open assembly and plan to demonstrate on Sunday, while this morning they will follow the news of the possible approval of the new housing decree. "We don't know if it will go ahead, what we know is that, either everything, or nothing. Either it is approved in full with all the demands or it is not approved," said the spokesperson.
Ana Orantes Ruiz was murdered by her ex-husband on December 17, 1997. Two weeks before, she had appeared on a Canal Sur program recounting 40 years of beatings. She had divorced, but the judge determined that she and her husband should remain in their home in Cúllar Vega (Granada). She above, he below, sharing the patio. He rarely passed there, but sometimes he returned. The last one, after seeing it on TV. He burned her alive in that shared patio. She was one of the women abused by their partners. Of the murdered women. But his story shocked society and made public a problem that until then was considered private. This crime changed the sensitivity of society and promoted legislative changes to confront it. In 1999, the Aznar Government modified the Penal Code. Psychological violence became a crime and restraining orders appeared. In 2004, the Zapatero Government approved the comprehensive law against gender violence and in 2007, the Law for Effective Equality of Women and Men. The crime of Ana Orantes awakened the collective conscience in the face of a social problem that already existed. And that awakening changed a legal framework that until then did not provide answers.
You can read the full column here
Twenty tents to protest the housing crisis in Malaga
About twenty tents remain installed in the Plaza de la Constitución, in the center of Malaga, after between 2,000 and 3,000 people demonstrated last night for housing. Promoted by the Malaga Tenants Union and the platform A roof for rights, the protest was called in front of the city hall, but later became a march that reached the heart of the capital while chanting slogans against speculation.
