The rhythms with which legislators work are usually slower than the reality of the street. It is understandable, because we must ensure full constitutional guarantees, and not legislate on impulse. However, sometimes the exasperating slowness with which urgent problems are sought to be regulated causes the disaffection among society towards politics. Especially when that slowness is due more to partisan calculations and marking ideological ground than to the debate on the law itself. There is something of this in the housing law, or rather, in the absence of a housing law in Spain. Two years after the coalition government that presented it among its star measures was launched, the state law It has barely begun its process in Congress. First, the two partners of the Executive, PSOE and Podemos, had to agree on a text on sensitive issues such as the regulation of rental prices, and then seek parliamentary support. The first vote, on March 10, saved ‘in extremis’ with the ERC votes, already showed that its approval will not be easy and that the negotiation of the amendments will be decisive. Added to all this are the reservations raised by some sections of the future law in legal fields, such as the two unfavorable, non-binding reports issued by the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ). The best intentions – to defend the right to housing– cannot collide with a right to property as defensible as the previous one nor generate a legal uncertainty that ends up producing the opposite effect to the one sought.
To complete the puzzle, Catalonia already had a housing law since 2020, which limited the price of rents. Law that was approved in Parliament and has been overturned by the Constitutional Court. It is paradoxical that one reason for its annulment has been that it invades State powers, when a state law has not yet been developed. So the ball is once again on the Government’s roof, the ‘president’ of the Government, Pere Aragonès, and the mayor of Barcelona, Ada Colau, came to remember this Monday after meeting with the Sindicat de Llogateres.
The difficulty of access to housing, especially in the rental market of large cities, is a problem that could be solved with a regulation that guides the necessary actions. In this way, some public intervention in prices or in taxation can be beneficial to avoid abuses, as long as it is balanced (not all owners are vulture funds). Spain needs a housing law, but an effective law that allows autonomous communities and municipalities to develop their public policies, not one that ends up blocked in offices or courts.