Housing, bewilderment and despair

Last weekend, there were once again major demonstrations in some forty cities across Spain. This is quite right, because Spain is a country that has decent housing (the adjective, here, is a noun) as a right recognized by the Constitution, so the citizens who go out to demonstrate for access to housing are merely exercising a constitutional right. This is where the discussion and ranting of supposed liberals (in reality, speculators and friends of speculators) denouncing alleged Bolivarian dictatorships or woke. We insist that citizens are merely demanding the exercise of a constitutional right, in Article 47, which states the following: "All Spaniards have the right to decent and adequate housing. The public authorities shall promote the necessary conditions and establish the pertinent regulations to make this right effective, regulating the use of land in accordance with the general interest." That is to say, the Constitution not only enshrines and guarantees the right to housing, but also foresees and urges the public authorities to prevent speculation with that right. Therefore, the false discussion about what weighs more, whether housing is considered a right or a market good, is also already closed in the constitutional text.

A few days ago, a report on the cover of The New York Times He referred to Barcelona as a "City of hopes and lost homes" (taking advantage of the phonetic similarity that exists in English between the words hopas, hopes, and men, homes). Enthusiastic, some wanted to see a challenge to the Colauism, but if they took the trouble to read the text by reporter Liz Alderman what they found was the confirmation of the results of handing the city over to mass tourism and its direct consequence, which is urban pressure and speculation. A city of one million people through which twenty million tourists pass in a single year: a Balearization Textbook, we might add. This hasn't happened during the term of a single mayor, but rather in the decades following the Olympic phenomenon. That momentum was leveraged to make the city accessible to easy money, and everyone who could, both in the public and private sectors, participated in the resulting effort. In fact, they still insist today.

This week, the Catalan Parliament will debate a decree on housing, with the promise of the 50,000 social rental apartments promised by Salvador Illa between now and 2030. It will have to be approved with the support of the opposition, which means balancing acts to please everyone without satisfying anyone. In the Balearic Islands, they have taken the most brutal route and what was approved is a decree that leaves all rural land unprotected, and now—with the PP under pressure from Vox—they want to do the same with urban land. You can recognize when an economic and social model is exhausted by the gestures of its political leaders: bewilderment, and also despair.