Housing and the prevalence of class conflict

Yesterday, Congress struck down the housing decrees with the votes of the PP, Vox, and Junts. It may seem like just another episode in a legislative term that gambles its survival on every vote, but it is more than that. A conflict, present throughout Europe, long postponed and never resolved, has returned to the center of politics. A conflict that situates itself unambiguously on the left-right axis, between liberalization and intervention. A fracture between those who have a home and those who do not, between those who will be able to leave an apartment as an inheritance and those who never will.

The problem is not new, but its nature has changed. Raquel Rolnik,, when she was the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to housing, warned that for financialized capitalism, housing is one of the safest and most profitable shelters. A house has ceased to be just a place to live and has become an asset that must generate returns. And this has been shifting uses toward everything that is more lucrative. Tourist apartments, seasonal rentals, rooms, or simply the empty apartment waiting to appreciate in value. In Barcelona, sublet rooms (now called coliving) managed by companies have gone from 175 in 2020 to more than 1,700 in 2026, at a cost of 1,100 euros each.

The result is that a constitutionally recognized right has remained out of reach for many people, forced to pay impossible rents with low wages. In 1991, only 6% of young people aged 30 to 34 lived in rented accommodation. In 2024, it was 43%. The age of emancipation has gone from 26 to over 30. Catalonia, with 17% of the population, accounts for more than a quarter of the evictions in the State. Neither the PP nor the PSOE governments have built or maintained the public rental stock that the countries around us have. The State government itself, in its foresight report Vidas futuras, calls for a stock "permanently protected" and policies "with a long-term perspective." It knows this. But it has not managed to turn it into a majority.

It is a problem that affects all citizens, regardless of how they vote. According to the CEO, housing is the number one problem for 28% of Catalans, almost triple that of immigration. And even among Junts voters, with a predominantly property-owning electorate, 65% want to regulate rental prices and 73% believe that large landlords should allocate apartments for social housing.

The decrees were emergency measures taken in a rush following the enormous shock caused by the eviction of Maricarmen Abascal. They did not intend to solve everything. They aimed to reduce emergency cases and immediate social costs, and also to prevent many apartments from remaining off the residential market for tourist or speculative uses. It is said that what is needed is to build and let the market work, and that without profitability there is no investment. But regulation does not aim to replace construction. It does something that construction cannot do in the short term, which is to protect the housing that already exists. The Constitution subordinates property to its social function and mandates "preventing speculation," and the Constitutional Court has already endorsed rent control. Even so, when it comes to voting, the parties have followed the left-right logic. They have voted in favor of the interests they defend, and not those of the general population or even their own voters. The argument that regulation "reduces supply and raises prices" is, almost literally, what the sector's business associations have been repeating for years.

There is, however, an underlying political consequence. The Maricarmen case has shifted the center of gravity of the debate from immigration to housing. And this favors the classic class conflict, between those who have and those who do not, over the conflict of origin, between "us" and "them," where the far-right plays at home.

Junts' vote is explained precisely by this change. In a moment of extreme weakness, with Aliança Catalana overtaking it in the polls, housing offers it the prominence and its own voice that immigration denied it, and in a space where Aliança Catalana is not present. In the field of immigration, Junts arrives late and seems like a copy. In terms of property, it recovers a recognizable profile, that of the old CiU, a party of order and of the property-owning middle classes. The risk that everything ends with a PP-Vox coalition that attacks self-government is known, and it is evident that the PNB, with a better situation than Junts, did not want to take it. Junts has calculated that, today, its most immediate danger is at home. And thus it prepares for the return of Puigdemont and for general elections in which Aliança Catalana has said it will not participate. On Friday, by voting against the decrees, Junts was voting for its own survival.

What is rational for a party, however, is not necessarily so for the country. Every week without protection, there are families losing their homes. Junts cannot take refuge in saying that there were parts of the decree it did not like, since it had on the table the possibility of approving it and immediately processing it as a bill through an emergency procedure and incorporating amendments. This would have allowed stopping the evictions that this week will be coming down from courts where the lawsuits are piling up.

Until a few weeks ago, the great axis of conflict was immigration yes or immigration no. The Maricarmen case has shifted this axis. Now the question is to choose between protecting the right to live in a dignified home or protecting the profitability of funds and large holders. It is a fracture that crosses identities. It appeals to young people, the elderly, and middle classes who have stopped being able to pay. The times we live in demand a return to the basics. The central question is not where you come from, but whether you can live with what you have.