The Sindicato de Inquilinas (Tenants’ Union) activist association which has been co-ordinating protests, announced during the congressional debate that it was abandoning the tent protest in central Madrid. It said it wanted to “take the struggle to all the neighbourhoods, residential blocks and homes of Madrid, wherever there are rental increases, expulsions and abuses each day, and turn the energy of the last few days into a permanent organisation”.
Protesters are also calling for a general strike over the housing crisis.
The left-wing coalition government responded to the social anger by hurriedly drawing up the two decree-laws in an effort to defuse the protests.
The first decree included the suspension of evictions of vulnerable tenants until 2030, a two-year extension to rental leases due to expire before 2028, tax increases for tourist apartments, and a restriction on the purchase of residential properties by what the government calls “vulture funds”.
The second decree was more controversial, because it included the automatic renewal of rental contracts, a major demand of many on the left and the Sindicato de Inquilinas.
The conservative People’s Party (PP) and far-right Vox had already said they would vote against both initiatives, leaving the minority government depending on the support of smaller nationalist parties in Catalonia and the Basque Country.
However, by the eve of the parliamentary session, the centre-right, pro-independence Together for Catalonia (JxCat) had signalled its opposition to both laws, condemning them to failure.
Friday’s debate was fierce and at times angry, as supporters and opponents of the decrees clashed in Congress.
“I don’t ask you, I beg you to be brave and consistent,” Sánchez said, moments before the two votes took place. “Because they are not just ambitious measures, they are necessary”.
He appealed to lawmakers “to put order and humanity into [the housing] market, because if we don’t, it will bring down our society”.
Social Affairs minister Pablo Bustinduy, of the Sumar alliance, the junior partner in the governing coalition, presented the debate in dramatic terms.
“Today is about defending an international oligarchy which is extracting the rent from salaries earned with the effort of working classes of this country in order to share it out with dividends and they don’t even pay taxes in Spain,” he said.
“Voting against these decrees today means defending the interests of this oligarchy and turning your back on your own people.”
However, Miriam Nogueras, of JxCat, said the decrees had been hastily drawn up and lacked rigour.
She said the decrees “will allow [vulture] funds to keep buying, keep speculating and evictions to keep happening… these two decrees would provoke the opposite effect of what they aim to achieve.”
The political right has argued that the government’s attempts to intervene will frighten homeowners, causing them not to put their properties on the rental market and pushing prices up further.
Juan Bravo of the PP said “housing doesn’t get cheaper with decrees, it gets cheaper with more homes”.
