“The Spanish People Will Remember Who Betrayed Them”

Could it be that Spain hasn’t let you know? None of you — none of you — is the person who has two weeks to find an apartment without knowing where they’ll go. And none of you is the person living in fear of an eviction notice arriving.

None of you is the person counting the months until their lease ends, waiting for their landlord to say something. None of you is the person coming home from work today with the radio on to hear the result of this vote. None of you is one of those people, yet you are going to decide for them. You are going to decide what happens with their lives.

Congressman [Gabriel] Rufián said earlier, and I agree, “Whoever comes up here today to argue against these two decree-laws should publicly reveal whom they have met with and who has called them in recent weeks.”

I know whom many of the congresspeople voting on these decrees today have met with and who has called them. They have met with a woman who has lived for forty-five years in the La Latina neighborhood, near here, in the very apartment where her husband and mother passed away, who is now awaiting an eviction notice because another one of these scoundrels has inherited the whole building and filled it with illegal tourist apartments, all with the collusion of the Madrid City Council.

I know there are congresspeople who have met with the seventy-five tenant families in the Casa de Alba, also threatened with eviction in order to turn their lifelong homes into vacation rentals, rooms for foreigners, and, yes, more illegal tourist apartments, and who, thanks to the lease extensions that the Partido Popular, Vox, and Junts voted against six months ago, could renegotiate their contracts and remain in their homes. We have met with these people.

I know there are congresspeople who have met with families living in fourteen buildings that belonged to the archbishopric of Madrid and were sold to a vulture fund, which in turn sold them to another vulture fund, which then sold them to yet another vulture fund — all three of them foreign — and who are living in buildings without lights in the hallways and at risk of collapse, because they want to throw everyone out in order to convert them into luxury housing for purchase by the foreign oligarchy to whom you people are selling off this country.

Today is not about parliamentary arithmetic. It is not about negotiations between political groups, not about amendments, not about the interpretation of this or that article.

Today is about a class conflict. Today is about defending an international oligarchy that is extracting rents from the hard-fought wages of this country’s working classes to divvy them among themselves as dividends without even paying taxes on it in Spain.

To vote no on these decrees today is to defend the interests of that oligarchy and turn your back on your people. You can shout Spain’s or Catalonia’s name at the top of your lungs. To vote against these decrees today is to betray your people to serve the sole cause and banner of rentism.

And I tell you this: you do not realize the magnitude of what you are doing.

Often there is a vast gap between the debates held inside this chamber and what the people out there want. Rarely has that chasm been as astronomical as what is happening here today in this session, in this chamber. Very rarely.

And if this is happening, if you are here today and must put your names to this disgrace, the disgrace of leaving millions of Spaniards unprotected, it is because the people have risen up, because a public outcry sweeps through the streets of this country, declaring that you do not represent them, that you offer no solutions to their problems.

And today once again they will insist on it. And if the people of this country have achieved that, they have achieved something even more valuable: demonstrating an incontrovertible truth to the citizenry as a whole. That truth is that all the rights of working people have been won through struggle, that none were conceded and none were gifted, and that all were wrested from the oligarchy by organizing, mobilizing, and protesting.

And perhaps today you will again strike down measures designed to protect the working people of this country. You may succeed in this today, but I tell you with the utmost solemnity, the right to housing in this country will prevail above the interests of the rentier class you represent.

In this country, 20 percent of the population rents. Some 5 percent of households receive income from rent. You speak of small landlords, but over the last fourteen years the number of Spanish families that own a property has fallen by 14 percent. Large owners have quadrupled their real estate assets during this period. Today 61 percent of rentals in Spain are owned by multi-property landlords and corporate entities. Six out of ten. In cities like Madrid and Barcelona, that figure is far higher.

To the members of the Junts: in the city of Barcelona, sixteen thousand people own two hundred thousand rentals. The income of these multi-property owners is, on average, four times that of a tenant family. The net worth of these multi-property landlords is 450 times that of the tenants.

The rental market in this country functions as a mechanism for the transfer of incomes from the working classes, who have the least, to the propertied classes, who have the most.

The measures outlined in today’s decree-laws entail a reverse transfer: €624 million passed from landlords to tenants. So this is not about parliamentary arithmetic.

What you are going to vote down today is precisely what would prevent €624 million from going into the pockets of those who have already quadrupled the rent on working families, paid out of workers’ pockets with the fruits of their labor. That is what you are voting for.

And there will be no flag-waving. There will be no outbursts, no obscene theatrics. You’ll have the keys to your own homes when [Popular Party leader Alberto Núñez] Feijóo governs. The only keys we’ve seen are those to [Popular Party politician Isabel Díaz] Ayuso’s penthouse.

Seven million euros in public funds. That is the Popular Party’s housing policy. Voting to evict people from their homes; voting to let them raise the rent by 40 percent. So they throw you out on the street. To leave you wondering if you’ll have to change your children’s schools because you can no longer afford the rent where you’ve lived your whole life, in the neighborhood where your parents and grandparents lived, forcing you out so an illegal tourist rental can take its place (while [Mayor of Madrid José Luis Martínez-] Almeida looks the other way) or so a foreign oligarch can have his little apartment in Madrid.

You do not defend the Spanish people. You defend the rich. You have neither a flag nor any shame.

And it isn’t just about the numbers. In this country, millions upon millions of people have had common experiences, which have now been brought out into the open and acknowledged. The management company that you ask to paint the walls, since they haven’t in twenty-five years, and they just pass you a can of paint. The landlord who tells you the rent is going up 40 percent because your lease is expiring but tells you to think it over, because a home is, after all, what’s most important in life. The corporation that keeps your security deposit, making up some excuse, or forces you to pay signing fees, despite these being lies — and illegal — or that charges you to view an apartment, or invents some nonpayment insurance or management fees that you have to pay because, “Hey, if you don’t, someone else will.”

Just imagine what people out there are going to think about how you vote today. While you are here not making a scene, not beating your chests but making political calculations of how you’ll fare in the elections or what’s most convenient, people outside are following closely because they have to renew their contract and haven’t heard a word yet, or have suddenly been told the rent is going up 60 percent because “that’s the market, buddy.”

Imagine what people are going to think when you vote no, when the only thing they can afford is a room in an apartment where a whole family used to live, but it was purchased by a vulture fund that put up partitions to cram six or seven families in because, hey, that’s the market, buddy. Just imagine what people will think when you vote no, while week after week they receive notices about an impending eviction or calls for people to help stop one.

Imagine what they will think as they watch their blocks and their neighborhoods fill up with illegal tourist rentals, with the wretched sounds of their luggage, watch how their local shops close down and how the place they called home, their neighborhood, where they wanted to raise their children, was turned into a theme park for those who can afford it, leaving the rest to fend for themselves. Just imagine what working-class people will think of their political representatives.

And when I say you fail to grasp this, I mean you think this won’t affect you. Members of the Popular Party: among your voters, there are two times as many tenants as landlords. Members of Vox: among your voters, there are three times as many tenants as landlords. The same applies to you, members of Junts.

What do you think? That right-wing people aren’t worried when their leases expire? That they aren’t worried about having to move to a different neighborhood? That they aren’t worried?

Mr Quero [Carlos Hernández, member of Congress for Vox], you were just speaking about those young people who have been apartment-hunting for months. I hope it isn’t your sister, Mr Quero. I hope she isn’t looking for an apartment. Because when we brought the measure to extend rental contracts here, you told me, “My sister is in that situation. She could benefit from it; it would really help her. But I’m going to vote no because, well, between BlackRock and my sister, I choose BlackRock.”

That is the difference between you and me, Mr Quero. I don’t know how your sister votes or what her ideology is, but I prioritize defending her interests and rights over those of the big multinationals. And you don’t. You don’t. You are selling out your country.

I ask that the people who are outside not be misled; it is the big multinationals, the financiers, the real estate lobby, that are funding a fearmongering campaign to poison the discourse and deceive you.

What is being voted on today is actually quite simple. There are five million Spanish citizens — of all ideological leanings, who vote for all the parties, and who live in every region — whose leases are expiring. What is being voted on today is an extension of those contracts for two years, without any rent increases. They are going to vote no on that.

What is being voted on today is freezing remaining rental contracts at a 0 percent increase, because working-class people in Spain already spend enough of their incomes on rent.

What is being voted on today is putting an end to the obscene, obscene fraud of seasonal rentals and contracts for rooms that they can lock you in each year, raising your rent, saying, “No, no — look, next year it’s going to be €300 more. Why? Because I say so. And if you’re not able to figure it out, this is over.”

Today we have the chance to vote yes and put an end to the fraud surrounding room rentals, which affects the most vulnerable people in this country. Yet you are going to vote no. You have been told about anti-eviction protections many times, but it makes no difference. The thing is, we don’t even need to say it. Every eviction that takes place after this vote will bear the names of those who vote no on these decrees today — whether they are from the PP, Vox, or Junts. It will bear their names.

And yes, I have the honor of defending the decree-law on rent stabilization today. This is the primary demand of the popular movement that has flooded the streets and shaped this country’s political agenda, finally bringing the number one issue facing working people in this country to the table in this parliament. Yes, the automatic renewal of rental contracts.

And what a week you’ve all had, right? Good grief — communism, interventionism — just look at the lengths we’re supposedly willing to go in order to attack small property owners. This is the model that exists in England, the Netherlands, Belgium, Italy, and across much of Europe, based on a principle that is quite simple to grasp: the need of the citizen — whether an individual, a family, or a worker — for housing does not simply expire every five years.

And so, when a contract ends, the prevailing notion is, “Well, the contract is over,” effectively throwing you back to the law of the jungle. “That’s the market for you, my friend; prices are up 40 percent, and if you can’t figure it out, well, too bad.”

This model, however, establishes that when a contract expires, it renews automatically unless there is a valid reason not to renew it. And people cried foul, shouting interventionism and claiming the market would collapse.

This sounds familiar, doesn’t it, Madam Vice President? Raising the minimum wage was supposed to destroy the Spanish economy. Strengthening workers’ rights? Good heavens! What would become of Spain’s productive fabric? Labor reform — providing stability, making jobs permanent — was deemed outrageous. It was supposed to sink the Spanish economy.

Yet here we are with the highest employment levels in our history and growing at a pace that none of the countries advocating those other measures are able to reach. Well, of course granting rights to working people makes things better.

And they say, “It’s outrageous, simply outrageous, that if a landlord wants to kick a family out onto the street without justification, they have to pay compensation!” Just imagine if these people were the ones drafting labor laws today. They’d say exactly the same thing. What a scandal — an employer having to compensate a worker for firing them without cause?

Imagine if these people were the ones building a public education, health care, or pension system today. Yet they say it openly: “The country’s retirees are the biggest economic threat we face.” They voted against adjusting pensions. Why? Because the retirees are the enemy.

But blaming migrants, blaming retirees, blaming the Left, blaming whoever is convenient — it’s all a way to distract from what they’re actually doing: constantly shielding the interests of the oligarchy, serving the elite, and betraying the working class. That’s simply what they always do.

They’re parasites, aren’t they? Living off handouts.

A family receiving €525 from social security is “living off handouts.” A retiree who has a pension after a lifetime of work is a “threat to public finances.” Yet someone who inherited seven apartments and lives off them without ever lifting a finger? That’s an entrepreneur. That’s the person we defend.

What hypocrisy and what a betrayal of the people. I truly believe that today you are going to make a political mistake that you will regret for a long time. You may be convinced that you can manage the media, stick to your schedules, and serve your own partisan interests. But in politics and democracy, there is something far greater — far greater, more important, and more powerful — than lobbies, private agendas, and all the money held by those who reap dividends and profits at the expense of the working class. That force is the social power of a conscious, awakened people who are out there right now demanding of their representatives and the authorities that they stop this shameful practice of looking the other way, blaming the opposition, and claiming that the situation is simply too complex.

Today there are solutions on the table — minimal solutions, to be sure. They represent a first step toward balancing the scales, making life a little easier for the working class, and bringing stability and certainty to their lives.

I can assure you that the people are going to remember. They will remember those who betrayed them.

This article originally appeared in Jacobin, a democratic socialist magazine publishing long-form essays and analysis on politics, economics, and culture. Subscribe to the print edition for $20 a year.