There are laws with their own names. Nothing to do with the official one, made of the number, the year, and a description longer than a day without bread. The popular title arises from episodes that shake the social conscience, such as the Maricarmen decree (two decree-laws, pending validation). A timely name, not an opportunistic one. It is not a patch for the specific case because, unfortunately, there are many Maricarmens on the verge of ruin. It sets limits on the law of the jungle and grants more stability: suspension of evictions for vulnerable people, extraordinary extensions, limitation or freezing of updates, and measures against fraud (with seasonal rentals, for example). Nor does it seem hasty or radical. It is symptomatic that the Basque right, calm and pragmatic, offers partial support, with the red line of automatic extensions.

Two weeks after being evicted and having become a symbol of the fight for housing, Maricarmen Abascal died this Wednesday in Madrid, as announced by the Tenants' Union. This 87-year-old resident of the Retiro district in Madrid had been admitted to the Gregorio Marañón Hospital in the Spanish capital since the day of the eviction, September 23, and had not yet been able to return to her home despite the "historic agreement" that allowed her to, signed between the investment fund that owned her apartment and Maricarmen's representatives and relatives as a result of social pressure. Tonight, those camped at the Puerta del Sol improvised a march and a gathering in front of the Congress of Deputies following her death.

Everyone to the polls. Pedro Sánchez has put an end to the rumors by announcing the end of a legislative term that will be high-stakes until the very last moment. His government had long since lost the majority to approve relevant projects, and the Moncloa was holding out, waiting for the ideal moment to challenge the right-wing parties, the clear favorites to govern from now on. In the PSOE, they believe the moment has arrived with the housing crisis and that they are prepared to face the elections with guarantees. How are the parties arriving at this call to the polls?

The last time he took a few days to reflect, Pedro Sánchez returned with "more strength", ready to "put a stop to the politics of shame". During those five days in April 2024 –in the middle of the election campaign in Catalonia–, everyone was pending his decision, which at the time had to do with the attacks his wife received, today about to be tried for embezzlement and influence peddling. Now things are slightly different: no one expects him to step aside, but everyone is waiting for him to make a decision. Will there be elections before the end of the year? At the PSOE they are prepared and with each passing day the voices pointing out that the legislature has ended are growing.

I do not usually agree with Junts on many things. However, regarding housing, their vote against Friday's decree contains a great economic sense which, as a science, is above any ideology.

Could the refusal to vote for the housing decrees in the Congress of Deputies benefit Junts? The calling of early elections by Spanish President Pedro Sánchez, will it allow him to gain support, stop the decline detected by the polls, or, on the contrary, will it take its toll? Issues related to housing navigate, in the electoral and communicative sphere, between what is technically called a positional issue and a valence issue. That is to say, on one hand, parties have different positions (proposals), which in this case can oscillate between positions more pro-market or pro-intervention (often aligned with the logic of left and right). On the other hand, there are valence issues, a way of focusing on a question that, a priori, has an opposing position, but which no one defends. For example, the idea that everyone has the right to housing is, politically, a valence position. Rarely will a politician give a public speech defending the opposing position. This also applies in many other areas: it is hard to think that a party can win votes by defending corruption or incompetence.

There are indeed temptations. For what? To call elections, naturally. From whom? From the only one who has something to say about this issue, which is the Spanish Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez. This weekend he will talk about it with his inner circle. There is anticipation for what he might explain on Monday to the PSOE executive, which meets at the central headquarters on Ferraz street. It will not be just another meeting. In fact, in the party, they say there could be news even before Monday. The climate left by the failure of the vote on the two decrees on measures to address the housing and eviction problem is one that sparks fires. In the government, there are diverse opinions. In the party, the idea is gaining ground that now might be a good time to jump into the pool, that it is time to cast the dice.

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.

“History will judge them sooner than they think and more forcefully than they think,” said President Sánchez, addressing Vox, the PP, and Junts while acknowledging his parliamentary defeat in the debate on the housing decrees. Immediately, the page has begun to be turned. The reasons for the summons have taken a back seat. The issue of housing is no longer news. Attention has shifted toward what has been read as an insinuation of an immediate electoral call. Coquetry or an anticipation of his intentions? The president is asking for a pause to finish deciding. It seems that this failure on a topic he thought would give him a significant boost has unsettled him, and he fears that by continuing, he may enter an endless agony. Now, what he must evaluate is whether he dares to run again or if he will go home. In any case, the right-wing parties will rush to claim victory: they have toppled the president.

For many of the people who have an opinion on the housing crisis, the reason for it is speculation, that is to say, that landlords are raising prices.

This morning began with a rumor that turned into a question: after Junts announced that it will not vote for the two housing decrees, will Pedro Sánchez announce the calling of elections? Because the scenario is favorable: the Maricarmen case has gone around the world (it has even reached the Pope), it has brought people out onto the streets; with the two decrees, the PSOE was siding with the people on the street, ergo if there has ever been a minimally favorable situation for the PSOE to call elections, it was this one. The Maricarmen case has erased Ceuta from the debate. With Ceuta you could not go to elections, but with Maricarmen you can. Now there is a clean cut: right and left.

The debate surrounding the two housing decrees that were voted on this Friday in the Congress of Deputies has left some parties so disoriented that in recent days, rumors of an imminent electoral call in the State have multiplied in parliamentary circles. For the second time in recent years, Pedro Sánchez has initiated a period of reflection, now to decide if the time has come to call early elections. Several sources connected to the Moncloa and consulted by the ARA acknowledge that it is a scenario that is on the table. The first available Sunday would be November 29.

You hear the actors involved in the housing debate speak, and it turns out that, here, everyone is afraid.

We have people camping in Ceuta wishing to enter and live in a country where there are people camping in protest for fear of being kicked out of the rental apartment where they live. It is the same country where there are thousands of people camping every night on the streets. Or who have had to turn their room into a campsite, into a kind of new vertical shanty town.

Ungovernable? At this point, the unusual situation with two decrees (two packages of measures that aspire to be voted on as decrees) competing with each other, so to speak, to be approved in Congress, is more of a snapshot of Spanish politics: fragmentary, tense, contradictory, difficult to govern. But also plural and diverse. The two decrees, or the two aspiring decrees, are, after all, a portrait in the form of a legislative rarity of what the majority that invested Pedro Sánchez is. A conglomerate of forces that ideologically goes from Junts to Podemos (neither of the two is far-right or far-left, by the way, but they do take pleasure in the role of uncomfortable partners and tough nuts to crack), passing through ERC (which tries to overcome post-process populism with Rufian-style populism), the Basque right and left (much clearer and more solid than the irritated, and irritating, Catalan independence struggle), plus another conglomerate, Sumar, which everyone knows has not worked, but which includes important parties within the Catalan Countries such as Compromís or Més per Mallorca. It is what the Spanish right usually ridicules as the Frankenstein, a majority made of many pieces, supposedly of political corpses (cadaverism related to the civil war is an ingredient very present in the patriotic recipes of PP, Vox and derivatives). Someone can also speak of frontism, of a left-wing front against a right-wing front.

This morning, Junts per Catalunya decided to launch a rocket into the sky, a rocket that can be seen from afar and indicates to everyone, for when another electoral cycle comes, that it is Junts and not Aliança that is the only alternative to the PSC-Esquerra-Comuns investiture and budget bloc. And that is why the president of the Junts group, Mònica Sales, has announced an action that had never been seen before: she wants Parliament to vote on the censure of President Salvador Illa: “You, President, are the worst president modern Catalonia has had (...) That is why I announce to you that today the Junts parliamentary group will present a motion to censure you as president of the Generalitat”

Pending the exact details of the decrees approved by the Spanish government this Tuesday, the first thing to say is that there is no issue more crucial and with as many edges right now in public debate as that of housing. But what the case of the Madrilenian Maricarmen Abascal has brought to the table is that no democratic society can accept that hundreds of people are evicted every week, nor that young people and those not so young find access to housing so difficult. The first is a matter of humanity, and the second affects the right to have a dignified life and has serious repercussions on the functioning of the economy.

It is evident that right now housing and immigration are decisive in public opinion and symbolize the concerns of the citizenry. The human condition, in its precariousness, has a natural tendency toward the logic of 'us and them' which easily tilts toward a dynamic of confrontation: the good guys and the bad guys. This logic, present at all levels of life, is capital in politics. The democratic principle that grants power (and the approval of laws) to whoever achieves half plus one of the seats contributes to this attitude.

Last week, the media virtually brought me close to two women who, for different reasons, caught my attention. One was the PP deputy for Ourense, Ana Vázquez, 51 years old; the other, Maricarmen Abascal, an 87-year-old pensioner from Madrid who was evicted by court order. I will not go into the background that motivated their respective (omni)presences in the media over a few hours, because otherwise the article would end up being the typical argumentative hodgepodge of an accelerated talk show. I will focus on how this brief (omni)presence will condition the rest of their lives, whatever they do. Regarding deputy Vázquez, I was perplexed by her vulgarity, beyond the little scene with the pepper spray: the gestures, the diction, that impertinent look... Regarding the pensioner Abascal, on the other hand, I was surprised by a serenity that, given the situation, was even more impressive. I don't know much more about these two women, especially the older one. I have read that Vázquez took the civil service exam for the National Police force, but jumped into politics at the age of 25, and that Abascal worked as a secretary at an American pharmaceutical company for more than three decades. I have a certainty, however: the Andy Warholian 15 minutes of fame of both ladies will be attempted to be stretched out for reasons that have little to do with the essential purpose of journalism, which—I remind you in case anyone has forgotten—is none other than to inform with rigor and truthfulness. It is probable that Ana Vázquez committed a more or less serious infraction in a parliamentary setting, and it is reasonable to think that Maricarmen Abascal personifies a situation that should not have been reached. The way the media will swallow both cases, however, is another matter. Their media history, so brief and noisy, will surely not vanish with the same speed with which it erupted. On the contrary: even if many forget about it, it will remain adhered to their public biography like a kind of second skin, a layer of interpretations that they have not chosen and that, nevertheless, they will have to swallow. It is the price of having been transformed by chance into involuntary symbols. From now on, any gesture by Vázquez will be filtered through the caricature of her unfortunate stunt; any appearance by Abascal, through the image of vulnerability that has been attributed to her. And it is here that journalism, when it abdicates its essential function, ceases to be an instrument of understanding to become a dangerous mechanism of solidification or fixation: it freezes people in a single frame and condemns them to represent it indefinitely. An example that people of my generation might remember: in 1975, the President of the United States Gerald Ford (1913-2006) went from being a politician to being only "the man who fell down the airplane stairs".

At this exact moment that I am speaking to you, everything suggests that there will be no agreement between the Spanish government and its multiple and diverse partners. What is non-negotiable for Sumar and Podemos (with Esquerra and Bildu behind them), which is that all contracts must be extended, whoever the owner may be, is a red line for Junts, with the argument that the housing policy that has not been implemented should not be paid for by small owners.If this were to end like this, what would happen? Well, today the Spanish government would approve a decree in the council of ministers that is insufficient to get everyone's votes, and it will then have a few weeks to continue negotiating it, before taking it to a vote in the Congress of Deputies to validate it. But the housing problem has exploded definitively. And on a global scale. The law of the market, when vulture funds enter, is no longer the law of the market, but rather it transforms into the law of the jungle. And the whole society must protect itself. Even the Pope has spoken about it, during the course of his trip to France: “What is the problem with an elderly woman being evicted from her home?” How is it possible that an elderly woman with a disability is being evicted?, asked Leo XIV. That how is it possible? Well, as that person said: “It’s the market, my friend”. Demonstration yesterday evening in Barcelona, in front of the Congress Palace where Pedro Sánchez was speaking. The social fracture between those who live in properties they own and those who rent is getting bigger and bigger. And now, the people protesting are convinced that this is the moment to change things, because we cannot continue like this. 15 years ago, those of the 15-M movement were affected by mortgages. Now we have gone from those affected by mortgages to those affected by rent. In fifteen years, will it be those affected by homelessness? Because housing is a branch of a bigger problem: that of the working poor, that of households where, with two salaries, it is barely possible to make ends meet or have anything left in your pocket to save. That of wage devaluation. And all of it, aggravated by inflation. This morning we learned that, due to the rise in gasoline prices, this month of September the cost of living for families has climbed up to 4.9% more than the same month last year. Data from the National Statistics Institute (INE). The social crisis is a disaster, a state of unrest. The political derivative is Sánchez's inability to square the circle on the right and on the left. And the PP and Vox make people believe that the day they govern they will solve it.By the way, Maricarmen will return home. Urbagestión, the investment fund that owns Maricarmen Abascal's apartment, has reached an agreement with the neighbor's lawyers so that she can return home. She will have to pay around 30% of her pension, approximately 500 euros (similar to the amount she was paying until now), in a contract renewed for eight years."It is a historic milestone. It had never happened before," celebrated Maricarmen Abascal's lawyer and the Tenants' Union. Good morning.