Zapatero intervenes to try to unblock the housing agreement with Junts

The former president of the Government José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero interceded with the leadership of Junts per Catalunya to try to get them to approve at least the first housing decree promoted by the Government. As confirmed to EL MUNDO by several sources participating in the conversations, the historic socialist leader intervened in extremis to try to unblock his position.

The appearance of Zapatero's figure before Junts occurred in coordination with the Sánchez Government. Through WhatsApp, the channel he usually uses with Carles Puigdemont's team, the former president of the Government entered the scene offering one of the main leaders of the nationalist formation to mediate and change their position.

The sources consulted by this newspaper describe Zapatero's participation in this process as "a temperature check, an approach to see where the insurmountable issues were." But also an offer to join the conversations and try to avoid them.

In this way, he recovered for a few hours a role similar to the one he had been playing in recent years as the interlocutor of the Sánchez Executive before the Junts leadership. Not in vain, the former Catalan president's own team always referred to Zapatero as "the firefighter who appears when there is a fire that the rest cannot solve" after the endless discussions for the drafting of the law that ended up erasing the crimes of the process.

In the exchange of messages in recent days, the former President of the Government asked, taking advantage of the trust acquired with the Junts leaders during the negotiation of the Amnesty Law in Switzerland, to clarify whether there was "margin" to redirect his position contrary to the two housing decrees. Since Junts concluded that the texts approved by the Government "encouraged a lie" and "would not solve the serious housing problem but could aggravate it."

He offered to try to solve the "insurmountable issues"

The former president did not participate at any time in the previous meetings between both parties and appeared on the scene when Junts conveyed that his decision was irrevocable and there was no turning back. The reply to Zapatero by Puigdemont's lieutenants consisted of clarifying that, indeed, it was a "decided" matter; They stressed that it was not "an occurrence"; and that the only alternative that the PSOE had was to support the alternative text that its spokesperson, Míriam Nogueras, would provide them, which transformed the extension of housing lease contracts that end before June 30, 2028 into "voluntary" and included tax credit measures, such as the deduction in personal income tax for the acquisition of a habitual residence.

Within the framework of the conversations between the independentists and the socialists, both parties exchanged numerous reproaches. On the part of Junts, that the decrees had incorporated issues that were not in the first versions, an issue that the Government denied. The public "disqualification" launched by the secessionists against the decrees generated, the same sources close to the negotiations abound, a "disappointment" in the Government that led to "all its alarms going off" when Junts called its Executive to a meeting held late in the afternoon last Thursday.

Puigdemont's party replied that it had already been "decided"

In this way, the former socialist president has resumed his contacts with Junts after months in which he had only exchanged a few occasional courtesy messages with Puigdemont and some of his main lieutenants. The rupture between Junts and the Government gave way to the total interruption of relations and contacts were resumed, also via message, after Zapatero's indictment in the Plus Ultra case or after the decision of the Court of Justice of the European Union to essentially support the Amnesty Law in the drafting of which Zapatero personally participated.

The contacts continued indirectly last August to probe the position of the secessionists almost a year after the fracture with the Sánchez Executive, being described by the socialists as a "very weak expectation of reunion" that has now been definitively blown up.

Although it has not been an issue that has been explicitly addressed in recent days between PSOE and Junts, the imminent decision of the Constitutional Court on the application of the Amnesty Law to Puigdemont hovers over this entire process. After the Supreme Court's decision that this rule was not applicable to the crime of embezzlement committed by the former Catalan president, the nationalists always demanded that the PSOE resolve this issue by influencing the Court of Guarantees chaired by Cándido Conde-Pumpido.

"Are you in charge or are you not in charge?" the Junts leaders even blurted out to Zapatero himself in the last meetings in Switzerland, back in late August 2025. They have always believed that the socialists have influenced the Constitutional Court but to delay its pronouncement as much as possible and, in this way, try to prevent Junts from completely breaking its support for the Government. Zapatero always deployed a speech to appease them in which he recalled that the same Constitutional Court had already cut back in 2010 key aspects of the Statute of Autonomy of Catalonia that he promoted from his Government and came to consider that the mention of Catalonia as a nation lacked legal effectiveness and normative value.

The Constitutional Court's ruling on Puigdemont is imminent and will finally allow the return of someone who has been a fugitive from Spanish Justice for 9 years. The former Catalan president has always conveyed to the socialists that no matter how much he demanded the application of the rule, a ruling in his favor would not automatically translate into a blank check in favor of the PSOE. Hence, when his return is practically a fact, he has distanced himself from the Government to the point of leaving it on the brink of the abyss.