At the gates of elections that will revolve around housing, the Spanish government is boasting about the construction of subsidized housing (HPO) during the first half of the year and speaks of "accelerated growth". The administrations as a whole – central, regional, and local – have begun to build 70% more apartments than in the same period last year. However, in absolute numbers, these are 13,942 homes, 20% compared to the 67,500 that have been promoted for the free market.

Junts currently occupies all the headlines for its no to the housing decrees, despite the fact that all other parties have been swallowing toads to approve a text that alleviates the serious situation suffered by many families. Affordable housing will not arrive without policy, and yesterday I started reading Vida y obra de Ildefonso Cerdá, written by Fabià Estapé, to understand what allowed the city of Barcelona to resolve serious public health issues and urbanize the Barcelona Plan around 1850. The works of Pedro Felipe Monlau, Joaquin Salarich and José Font Mosela, as well as the fifteen hundred pages of the Teoria General d’Urbanització, managed to objectify the living conditions of the day laborers confined within the walls of Barcelona. Cerdà's Eixample took decades to consolidate, due to the continuous conflicts of interest between property rights and the easements of the general plan. But there were clear objectives, and the very implementation of the streets overcame the controversies and constant boycotts from multiple fronts.

In the midst of the housing crisis, the Government has made officially protected housing (HPO) one of its flagship projects. This Friday, the PSC and Comuns have presented a bill to accelerate the creation of officially protected housing that includes five measures, one of which is to give interested owners the option to convert commercial premises, offices, and hotels into protected apartments. According to sources close to the negotiation, "if everything went well and the entire package of measures worked" it could serve to incorporate up to 20,000 apartments. "It was an unavoidable priority to expand the stock of protected housing and ensure that housing fulfills its essential function of being a home," defended the Minister of Territory, Sílvia Paneque, at the joint presentation of this regulation alongside the leader of Comuns, Jéssica Albiach.