The Spanish left is meeting to seek a response to the wave of protests in the streets due to the housing crisis that the country is experiencing, with the possibility that Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez will choose to go to early elections. The five ministers who represent the Sumar coalition in the current executive also participate in the meeting: Yolanda Diaz (Labour), Ernest Urtasun (Culture), Monica Garcia (Health), Sira Rego (Youth Policies) and Pablo Bustinduy (Social Rights). In recent days, tens of thousands of people have taken to the streets for the right to housing, also calling for a "general strike" and attacking "speculators". Sánchez will lift his reservation on early elections tomorrow, Monday 5 October, with his party, the PSOE, pushing him to vote.
For the PSOE, the housing protests are an electoral "opportunity".
According to El Pais, tomorrow we will therefore know what Sánchez has chosen to do, after the pause for reflection announced on Friday, following the rejection in Congress of the two government decrees on housing, rejected with the votes of the People's Party, Vox, joined by the decisive ones of the seven deputies of Junts per Catalunya. If we go to the vote, it seems that the earliest possible date could be November 29th. For the PSOE, the housing protest can transform the parliamentary defeat into an electoral opportunity and make the PP, Vox and Junts face the responsibility of the vote. However, doubts remain among part of the Socialist Party and the government regarding the alternative of approving new housing decrees and gaining time. Also holding back the vote is the fragmentation of the left, with Sumar and Podemos still divided, and the risk that the wave of protest will fade away in 54 days of the electoral campaign.
Right ahead in the polls, but the housing crisis reopens the game
According to polls, if voting were held today, the Popular Party and Vox together would have the majority, but the housing crisis could reopen the game: 67.5% of Spaniards are in favor of limiting rental prices even at the cost of reducing the profitability of owners. Support exceeds 55% even among PP and Vox voters. This is also why some allies in the majority are holding back Sánchez who is thinking about early voting, asking that "the housing measures" arrive first.
The case of Maricarmen and the protests
The wave of protests started with the case of Maricarmen (Maria del Carmen Abascal), an 87-year-old woman with a recognized 50% disability, who on 23 September was evicted from the house where she lived for 71 years in Madrid, in the Retiro neighbourhood. The Urbagestión investment fund, which acquired the property in 2018, had increased its rent by 250%. On September 28, after the news had become prominent throughout the country, an agreement was announced between the company and the elderly woman's family, to allow her to return to live in the same accommodation, paying a sustainable rent. However, the case has lit a fuse that was already ready to explode: discontent over the exponential growth of rents has been spreading in Spain for years, starting with those of Madrid and Barcelona, but also of other main cities, such as Valencia, Granada and Alicante, all theaters of the protests of recent days.
