The regional presidents of the PP have spent a day and a half with the leader, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, staying in a hotel in the tiny municipality of Colunga (Asturias), where they arrived on Friday afternoon. The reason for the confinement was to finish defining the fringes of the Declaration of Asturiasa dozen-page text signed by the barons with which they intend to harmonize measures in housing to tackle the problem of the increase in the cost of buying and renting through tax reductions, land liberalization and anti-squatting regulations. The star measure announced by the leader of the Popular Party this Sunday is the reduction of the property transfer tax (ITP), under regional jurisdiction, from 10% to 4% for young people. Génova’s intention is that the 11 communities where the PP governs apply this tax reduction for the purchase of second-hand properties, although there are already several territories where it is implemented, such as Andalusia (where it is 3.5%) or Castilla y León . With the conclave, the barons have also achieved a new photograph with which to display territorial muscle. “We have to continue with an alternative. That’s why we are here, that’s where the Government stays with its murky affairs,” Feijóo told his people in Oviedo.
Feijóo and his barons left the closed-door meeting this Sunday morning to formally present the document at the Reconquista hotel in Oviedo, the capital of one of the few communities where the PP does not govern. The leader of PP has arrived at the building, where the Princess of Asturias Awards are usually held, flanked by the president of the Community, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, and the president of the Asturian PP, Álvaro Queipo. The rest of the barons followed the procession to the porticoed patio, where one by one the presidents signed the document and hugged Feijóo. which received a standing ovation from the hundreds of officials present at the event. “Spain is not obliged to fail, to maintain misgovernment. We must dedicate ourselves to making the policy that serves, the only policy that is worth it,” Feijóo began his speech, insisting on the message with which Genoa has started 2025, that of offering a constructive “alternative.” The motto of the event was precisely Politics that serves. And with the act the popular ones have gone one day ahead of the forum in which Pedro Sánchez intervenes this Monday, , and in which the President of the Government will announce new measures.
In addition to the reduction of the ITP, they also intend to lower taxes on those who buy, rent and lease a home; give 100% guarantees for those under 40 years of age who buy a house; release public land to make it available to the sector and build homes “for rent at a price assessed 30% below the price [de mercado]”; create anti-squatting insurance and legal assistance for this purpose; in addition to enabling a specific telephone number for complaints about squatting and a specific registry of squatted houses along with “permanent contact with the police.” Finally, the PP wants to reduce the average response time for reports from the nines to three months and “make the regulatory framework more flexible so that more people can access officially protected housing.”
In addition to housing, the barons have also signed a point in the agreement that includes the “open market” formula between communities, so that the licenses and permits granted in one autonomous community are valid in others. However, the Ministry of Economy, with Carlos Body at the helm, to facilitate obtaining permits so that it can operate throughout Spain with a type of single license that is always agreed upon with the autonomous communities.
“What a difference between the meeting we had here and the Conference of Presidents,” Feijóo stated to criticize the conclave organized by La Moncloa in mid-December, also focused on housing. “That was a set of monologues without documentation. Here, we presidents have had a sense of State and we have listened to each other without a time limit,” he stressed. Genoa’s plan is to continue organizing new similar events to continue strengthening its parallel Government through the presidents of the autonomous communities.
