The problem is clear, the dwelling. What there is no consensus on is the solution. Las dos partes del Gobierno, PSOE y Sumar, viven estos días en un continuo tira y afloja a causa del decreto que incluía la prórroga de los alquileres y que fue derogado el miércoles en el Congreso de los Diputados, tras el voto en contra de Junts y la abstención del PNV.
In the wing headed by Yolanda Díaz they have already started working on a new decree that they want to take to the Council of Ministers soon, although it will not be next Tuesday, and they are seeking to incorporate in it some of the measures demanded by the rest of the partners to try to attract the support of the investiture bloc. However, in the socialist sector they drag their feet and They are in favor of approving lower-ranking initiatives that do not have to be endorsed by the Lower House.
Thus, with this route the socialists believe that the Executive could cushion itself from notorious parliamentary defeats like the one on Wednesday. Because in the PSOE there is deep discomfort with Sumar for having forced them to approve a decree in the Council of Ministers and then not having been able to obtain the support to validate it, also generating legal insecurity for thousands of homes.
According to a senior official from the socialist wing of the Government, they have been able to reach an agreement with different actors to execute the State Housing Planbut they cannot answer for what parliamentary groups like Junts or the PP do. They assure that they will continue “having political initiative”, but that it must be understood that “there are decrees that cannot be validated if there is no majority.”
Faced with this scenario of blockade, they are committed to approving decrees in the Council of Ministers that do not have the status of law and that do not have to be validated later. They give as an example the single registration of tourist flatsapproved last year without going through Congress. They also explain that in autonomous communities such as Catalonia, formulas are being studied to prevent homes from ending up in investment funds without changing the law, but rather by modifying urban planning law.
For Sumar and the rest of the left-wing parliamentary partners, this is clearly insufficient. They consider that the rental problem must be directly addressed with an extension like the one repealed and that, to do so, it is necessary to bring a decree to Congress again. According to a Sumar minister, they are already working on a new text and are quite optimistic about it.
Sumar believes that Junts may end up voting in favor, although the independentists are not even showing signs that they are going to sit down to negotiate, if some of the measures that Carles Puigdemont’s people are asking for when they talk about the matter are included in the future text.
According to these sources, the Junts spokesperson who was in charge of setting the party’s position in Wednesday’s debate was quite clear with some of the measures that the independentists demand in terms of housing. They ask, for example, for a deduction for home purchases or rehabilitation, protection for debtors when the loan is sold to a third party or that the sale of homes for the elderly in a residence does not involve paying personal income tax. They are also asking for tax aid for the self-employed which, although it has nothing to do with housing, could be included in a future decree as a nod. It is not the first time that the Executive includes unrelated matters in the same decree.
Although Sumar does not share many of these measures, they consider them to be a lesser evil if by swallowing them they can ensure that Junts does not vote against them again. In the end, it is about offering independence supporters a text that they cannot reject because it is tailored to them. “We have cards to play with and we believe there is water in the pool”assures the minister.
Other partners from left-wing parties consulted assure that if the Government brings a decree to Congress again, they will vote in favor even if it includes measures that they do not like. Nobody wants to take on the burden of knocking down something of these characteristics and they feel that they could pay dearly if they oppose an extension because it pampers the landlords too much. We would have to see what Podemos does, which continually seeks its own profile. But the newspaper archive points out that, in this type of vote, the purples do not want to take the blame, as happened with the arms embargo on Israel, which seemed insufficient to them but they did not overthrow it.
Furthermore, at Sumar they are convinced that if they achieve a yes vote from Junts they can take for granted the support of the PNV as well. They interpret that the Basque nationalists abstained last Wednesday to establish their own profile and once it was already more than evident that the decree would fall due to Junts’ no. “If it had depended only on the PNV, they would not have repealed it,” adds this minister.
In fact, despite the current unrest between the PNV and the Government, its parliamentary spokesperson, Maribel Vaquero, has been claiming these days that “comprehensive measures” are needed to tackle the housing problem and that, to have their vote, we must sit down to negotiate. That is, they are in favor of seeking an agreement. And at Sumar they will be happy to put it on a plate for you.