The Parliament rejects Illa's star proposal on housing

BarcelonaThe Parliament has rejected the censure of the President of the Generalitat, Salvador Illa, and his entire Government. The votes of Esquerra and the Comuns, along with those of the PSC, were key to ensuring that the resolution proposal presented by Junts did not go forward. However, the Catalan chamber also did not validate the announcement regarding housing made this Tuesday by Salvador Illa, that is, for the Generalitat to buy half of a home with people over 40 years old who wished to take advantage of it. Only the PSC and ERC voted in favor, while the Comuns abstained. The group led by Jéssica Albiach wanted to send a "warning" to the executive, party sources pointed out. They are not against the initiative, but they consider it "insufficient" and intended their abstention to be a message demanding that the Government "comply with pending agreements." On the other hand, the two investiture partners did endorse the plan to increase the public affordable housing stock by 50,000 apartments by 2030.

Regarding housing, there were several resolution proposals with the content of one of the housing decrees that the council of ministers approved on Tuesday and which now hangs by a thread due to the uncertainty regarding Junts' position. The juntaires, precisely, voted against one of the resolution proposals presented by ERC regarding the prohibition of evictions for vulnerable people, which resembled that of the decree approved by the Spanish government. Instead, Junts had presented a resolution of its own in which it made an explicit distinction for this prohibition between vulture funds and small landlords. The proposal received the support of the PSC and the Comuns.

The socialists abstained on the proposal from the Comuns that replicated one of the decrees that the Spanish government approved this week: the automatic renewal of rental contracts.

On the other hand, the ERC proposal that advocated reaching a "broad consensus" to resolve the Catalan political conflict and that this solution be "endorsed by the citizens of Catalonia" has also been approved. The proposal received the support of the PSC, Junts, ERC, Comuns, and the CUP. These are the same groups that also voted in favor of establishing the national convention to resolve the political conflict that ERC and PSC agreed upon for the investiture of Salvador Illa. In the resolution presented by the republicans, they added that this agreement, once established—it does not set a date for when that should be—should present its conclusions within one year. Furthermore, Parliament has also once again demanded the "total and immediate" application of the amnesty law, which received votes in favor from all groups except the PP and Vox.

Neither ERC nor the PSC brought any resolution proposal to ask for the materialization of the new financing for Catalonia, despite having agreed to it—they did present one last year, when the agreement was not yet closed. In contrast, the Comuns did write in one of their proposals to reflect this pact to change the regional financing model, which received the votes of socialists and republicans. Junts, for its part, had incorporated a proposal that defended the economic agreement which only received the support of ERC. In fact, the Junts members are currently against endorsing the model agreed upon between the socialists and Esquerra when it reaches Congress.