If there is no last-minute change after a negotiating night that is expected to be very busy, the Council of Ministers, with Félix Bolaños leading the multi-party conversation, plans to approve again this Tuesday that the votes of PP, Vox and Junts knocked down a week ago in Congress. But this time, according to different government and parliamentary sources, he will chop it up even more than he did last year,
Unless there is a last minute change, or a delay in extremis – there would still be one more week to approve it – the decree will be split in two to make it easier to approve it and will be taken to the Council of Ministers today. In one will go the pensions and other issues of the social shield that did attract consensus, and in another the one to which the PNV also objects.
The Government is encountering, in an issue as delicate and divisive as housing policy, a difficulty that was already seen when a fiscal package had to be agreed upon at the end of 2024: Spain has a progressive Government, but Parliament has a clearly conservative majority on key issues. That is why the Executive does all kinds of juggling, including omnibus decrees, to try to force right-wing nationalists to support left-wing measures.
This time, however, everything indicates that the Government is going to have to give in to Junts – and now also the PNV. Carles Puigdemont’s party maintains that the anti-eviction shield harms landlords who cannot kick vulnerable tenants out of their apartments when they do not pay. The decree includes public compensation for these landlords, but Junts and other groups maintain that it does not work well.
The left, for its part, is pressing to approve this anti-eviction shield that has been in force since the pandemic and that, if it declines, could leave more than 50,000 vulnerable families on the street, most of them with small children, if no other solution is found.
After intense negotiation over the weekend, and in the absence of any last-minute surprises, the decision leaned towards chopping up the decree to guarantee the immediate approval of the pension increase, to ensure that retirees do not see their pay reduced in February – something that, according to different sources, was never at risk. From there, it is not clear whether the anti-eviction shield would be approved by the Council of Ministers itself or a little more time would be allowed to continue negotiating it with Junts and PNV. All left-wing groups, but especially Sumar, which is in the Government, pressed until the last minute not to let the moratorium fall.
Sumar demands that everything go together, or that at least an agreement be closed that guarantees that the anti-eviction shield will not decline. The decrees could be voted on separately and that would eliminate the risk of pensions falling again, but it would increase the possibility that the anti-eviction moratorium will not go ahead. This is something very delicate for a progressive Government because it can multiply a trickle of very harsh images of vulnerable families expelled from their homes for not paying rent at a time when skyrocketing prices and the lack of public housing make an alternative solution impossible.
Last week, the one that included the revaluation of pensions and the prohibition of evictions for vulnerable people. Both Alberto Núñez Feijóo’s party and Carles Puigdemont’s party have positioned themselves in favor of the former, but they justify, however, that the moratorium on evictions favors squatting – something that the Executive denies based on the decree, which expressly excludes such cases – and they warn that they will not support it.
Sumar opened up this Monday to the idea that the social shield and pensions should be included in separate decrees, but refuses to separate the agreements in time. That is, only approve pensions tomorrow and leave the prohibition on evictions for later.
The PNV, also with reluctance and which already reproached the Government for the way in which it had carried out the measures, warned this Monday that the Executive must “rethink” the decree by extending the social shield to small owners with a single rental home, “leaving them exempt from assuming the burden of offering a housing alternative to people in vulnerable situations,” as claimed in a press release. “This responsibility cannot fall on these small owners, the Administration must help these people who have been left without resources, but without harming those who have a single additional home for rent,” defends the spokesperson for the Basque Group, Maribel Vaquero, in the statement. “Working without getting carried away by populism benefits the Basque citizens whom we represent,” concludes the deputy.
Leaders of Sumar, Podemos and ERC have put pressure on both the socialists and the right this Monday to recover the measure. “We want everything to go together,” insisted the spokesperson for Movimiento Sumar and Minister of Culture, Ernest Urtasun, who has shown himself open to negotiating changes to achieve the yes of other parties, with the condition that they do not affect the core of the decree. “Our hand is outstretched to see how we can adjust the measure, as long as the protection of families is not put into question,” he stated at a press conference about possible aid to homeowners, a card that the Government already played last year to attract Junts. The independentistas complain that these compensations.
Also from Sumar, the Minister of Social Rights, Pablo Bustinduy, asked this morning on TVE not to give in to the “blackmail” of the right and has assured that the formula of this new decree has not yet been finalized. “The way remains to be seen, we must dialogue and make it happen. But we must not give in to this blackmail that has attempted to sacrifice the most vulnerable people in the name of pensioners.” Both Bustinduy and Urtasun have publicly defended that “the how matters less than the what.” “What is to protect them and not also give in to this ideological operation that seeks to discriminate and say: support pensioners, yes; support the people who have the least, the poor, no,” the head of Social Rights has said. How would it be if the measures were contained in one or two different regulations.
“It is sad that we talk about choosing between pensions or the rest of the social shield. Who do we let fall? The answer is no one,” its head of Federal Organization, Eva García Sempere, defended along the same lines from Izquierda Unida. In a similar tone, Alberto Ibáñez, from Compromís, has stated in Congress that an attempt will be made to “make everything possible”, including the exemption from payment of the dana aid tax.
Sources from the coalition’s minority partner add that they are going deep these days and that on this issue, their objective is shared with that of the PSOE. The ERC spokesperson, Gabriel Rufián, revealed that contacts with the Government began last night and he has been categorical in his defense of the initiatives. “It won’t be for us. I think it’s a bad excuse to vote against a decree with the vast majority of good things, simply because you don’t like something. It’s like going without eating on a menu because you don’t like a dish,” he justified in statements to the media in the Lower House.
Podemos spokesperson Pablo Fernández has gone one step further, stating that if the PP, Vox and Junts do not want to support the anti-eviction measures, the Government can bring a new decree to the Council of Ministers every month. If you are not willing, he has suggested, the other option is to “pay vulnerable people rent” to avoid evictions. “It is up to the Government to find the formula that it believes is most effective so that the revaluation of pensions is approved. We will always be in favor and we would like them to increase more,” he said about the other fundamental measure that fell last Tuesday and affects nearly 10 million retirees.
