Abascal's death focuses Spain's snap vote on housing

Rents rose 80% in a decade as 76.3% back state housing intervention

The death of María del Carmen Abascal — whom The Guardian described as the enduring face of Spain’s housing crisis — has placed rents and evictions at the center of the campaign for the snap general election Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has called for late November. Abascal died on Wednesday night, a fortnight after her eviction from the Madrid flat where she had lived most of her life, according to The Guardian.

Abascal’s death now looks set to focus even more attention on housing in the run-up to that election and, in particular, on what her lawyer has called “the shameful violence of these types of evictions and the evident impact and consequences they can have on people’s health.”

Her plight had already become a rallying point. Flowers and candles accumulated at the protest camp in Madrid’s Puerta del Sol, where demonstrators had gathered in response to the government’s housing proposals and the parliamentary defeat that followed. With rents up 80% over the past decade and more than 42% of Spaniards identifying access to housing as their main worry, The Guardian wrote, the political tipping point that years of protests against overtourism and gentrification had failed to reach may now, arguably, have been crossed.

Last week, rightwing parties in Spain’s congress — including the Vox party, which The Guardian describes as far-right — voted down the socialist-led government’s emergency housing measures. Sánchez responded by calling the snap election for late November, betting that housing will dominate a campaign where the conservative People’s party (PP) holds a polling lead.

Spain’s state centre for sociological research published polling on Thursday showing that 76.3% of those surveyed were in favor of the state intervening in the market “as much as necessary to guarantee everyone’s access to housing,” while 79% believed housing should be prioritized as a constitutional right.

Sánchez’s government has redrafted its defeated measures into two new decrees containing 21 provisions, including facilitating renting or buying a new home, extending eviction protections for vulnerable residents, prohibiting speculative real estate purchases, and granting tax breaks to property owners and tenants who pay on time. “These are measures that, if I may say so, are a matter of simple common sense; a matter of humanity,” Sánchez said Tuesday. “They unite small property owners and tenants while standing up to vulture funds, precisely because they target only those who view housing merely as a commodity for speculation.”

The measures come nearly three years after Sánchez promised to build 184,000 affordable public rental homes. His government has also introduced a law allowing authorities to cap “disproportionate” rent prices in some areas. Those who had voted down last week’s decrees did so despite studies showing the measures enjoyed “cross-cutting support that transcends ideology,” Sánchez said, adding that the public was in favor of regulating “a dysfunctional market.” He is now hoping that at least one of the decrees will be passed by congress’s permanent council, a special body that operates when parliament is not in session, and that its approval could go some way to convincing voters that his administration is taking the housing issue seriously.

Alberto Núñez Feijóo, the leader of the PP, said on Monday that it is a bit late for Sánchez to “suddenly appoint himself Spain’s housing champion.” “Housing has been the big failure of this government but will be the success story of the one that follows it,” Feijóo said. “When a prime minister has been in power for eight years, it’s hard to blame others for what he’s failed to do.” The PP has promised to address the crisis by building 200,000 homes a year, lowering taxes and cutting down on bureaucracy.

However, the PP’s decision to side with the Vox party, which The Guardian describes as far-right, and with the rightwing Catalan pro-independence Junts to defeat the measures has left it looking less than committed to the issue of the day. Sánchez and his allies will be hoping that fact will not be lost on voters as the election campaign kicks off and as trade unions prepare a general strike over housing for November 11.

Feijóo began his campaign on Wednesday in Spain’s North African territory of Ceuta, where at least 141 people died as tens of thousands attempted to cross from neighboring Morocco at the end of July. About 80,000 migrants entered Ceuta during the mass crossing, drawing criticism of the government’s handling at home and abroad. Speaking there, Feijóo promised that Ceuta’s safety would be at the “top of [the] in-tray” if he became prime minister.

Vox, for its part, posted footage of a television interview in which Abascal said she held Sánchez responsible for what had happened to her. The party accused the socialists of “using the suffering of an elderly person to stage a campaign to hide the government’s responsibility in the housing disaster” and suggested that Sánchez had visited “ruin and death” on Spain — citing floods that killed 230 people in Valencia two years ago, last year’s nationwide power cut, the deadly train crash in southern Spain in January, and recent events in Ceuta.

After Abascal’s death, Feijóo called for restraint: “No campaigning, no political parties, no partisan ends, no more bricks in the wall,” he said Wednesday night. “When a person dies there should be nothing but respect.”