PP leader promises a million homes to fight crisis in Spain

O leader of the Spanish People's Party (PP, right) today promised to build at least one million houses and "the greatest help in history" for young people to come to power after the elections of 29 November.

“ If the Spanish give us the confidence, the young will have the greatest help in history to buy a house”, said Alberto Núñez Feijóo, in a pre-campaign initiative in Seville, in the south of the country.

The difficulty in accessing housing has mobilized thousands of people in protests in Spain last month and the ‘chumbo’ by the parliament of government measures in this area has even precipitated the call for early elections to November 29 by the socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez.

With housing remaining at the center of today's politics, the PP leader has now advanced with a series of promises: in addition to helping under 40 to buy a house (in tax benefits and others), he has promised to create the conditions for the construction of at least one million homes, to replace Sánchez in the position of Prime Minister.

Among the promises you made today is a “urgent” review of the Land Law, to simplify procedures and reduce the bureaucracy associated with building or a new anti-occupational law.

To encourage the lease, he advocated more tax benefits for tenants and owners that prolong existing contracts for three years with rises below inflation.

Feijóo recalled that Sánchez and the Socialists have been in government for eight years, when housing became “the main social problem of Spain”, considering that it is “a failure” of the executive, although he is now using it “as an excuse” to call the elections.

“ There have never been so few houses in Spain as in the last four years. And the population had never grown so much”, he said, stressing that the price of rents rose 45% and that of house purchase 74%.

“It’s a reality that bothers the left and the government. They worsened the problem ", considered the PP leader.

Housing has been one of the themes on which PSOE and Pedro Sánchez have focused the pre-campaign for the November 29 elections, along with the “social advances” that they say are threatened if the government passes into the hands of the right (PP) and the extreme right (Vox), as forecast polls so far.

Just the day after the election call, Sánchez launched the pre-campaign with the approval, on October 6, by the Council of Ministers, for the second time, of the housing decrees 'drummed' by the plenary of the deputies.

With Parliament dissolved, the diplomas will now be voted by a permanent committee of parliament, where the right-wing parties who voted against no longer have a majority.

“If the majority of Parliament, as it did, turns its back on citizens in one of the issues that worries them the most, such as access to housing, then citizens must elect a new parliament and until that happens, the government will continue to rule,” said Sánchez that day.

Days later, at the first rally of the pre-campaign, the leader of the PSOE promised that if he was elected again he would “reinforce and maintain” these measures, which he said protect at the same time small owners and tenants.

The decrees contain measures such as restrictions on evictions by 2030 or the automatic extension, for up to two years, of current lease contracts that expire before 2028. They set limits on the purchase of a house by investment funds until 2030.

The package also includes more tax benefits for owners and some tenants, first house purchase aids, limitation of annual rent updates to 2% (even if inflation was higher) or a regulation of room rental and seasonal lease.

So far, the PP and Vox have focused their campaign on immigration and border control issues.

Alberto Núñez Feijóo even launched the pre-campaign on October 7 with a trip to Ceuta, the Spanish enclave in North Africa where at the end of July more than 70,000 people entered illegally.