Spain • • • 🌿 Progressive

Hemiciclo del Congreso de los Diputados con bloques de viviendas al atardecer al fondo
El Congreso somete este viernes dos decretos de vivienda a convalidación urgente sin los votos amarrados. · Ilustración generada por IA

Spain's Congress votes housing decrees with no secured majority

Spain's government puts two housing decrees to an urgent confirmation vote this Friday without the votes: 171 starting noes against 168 committed yeses, with…

--- The context --- Spain's government will put two housing decrees to an urgent confirmation vote in Congress this Friday, decrees approved this Tuesday by the Council of Ministers, without having the votes locked in. Executive sources admit neither text has its approval secured: they speak openly of a gamble. The first decree bundles protection against evictions until 2030 and aid for landlords; the second extends automatic lease renewals. For the government, the political calculation is clear: it would be hard to explain a rejection by the investiture majority of a text that protects vulnerable tenants. --- The facts --- The parliamentary arithmetic is unforgiving. There are 171 certain noes to start with: the PP, Vox and UPN, plus the deputy now in the Mixed Group, Javier Ortega Smith. The PP did not even seriously consider abstaining: it flatly rejects the government's interventionist model for the housing market and complains that nobody called them to talk. The Housing Ministry did not contact Vox either, taking those votes as impossible. On the other side, only about 168 yeses are committed: 121 from the PSOE, 26 from Sumar, five from the PNV, seven from ERC, six from EH Bildu, one from the BNG, one from Águeda Micó of Més-Compromís, and the possible vote of Coalición Canaria, which has not materialized yet because its interlocutors could not even receive the decrees all Tuesday afternoon. The full investiture majority would reach 179 votes in favor, but that goal is no longer clear at all. The defeat of the second decree, on automatic lease renewals, is taken for granted by sources both in the government and among its partners. --- The positions --- Junts keeps seven votes up in the air. Sources in its leadership confirmed on Tuesday that they will make no assessment until they have the final texts, since they understand no text is closed yet. The party broke its peculiar relations with the executive a year ago and almost never anticipates its vote on any project; the government counts on them for the first decree, but the only advice Junts has offered ahead of Friday is that the government should watch the voting scoreboard. Podemos is not clarifying its position either. Its secretary general and Congress spokesperson, Ione Belarra, declined to say how her four deputies will vote, indispensable as all those who backed Sánchez's investiture three years ago. Belarra asked that the decrees not be split and aligned with the maximal demands of the Tenants' Union, including expropriations of vulture-fund flats. In the afternoon she described the split into two decrees as a strategy to weaken support and demanded a rectification with a single decree, which will not happen, while adding that her four votes would be a tool in the hands of those mobilizing. The government hopes Podemos will not step aside and will play in both votes, but with no certainty: a yes from Podemos could lift the progressive majority to 172 yeses and even allow Junts to abstain. Gabriel Rufián, ERC spokesperson, said what was agreed was not enough, but argued for being pragmatic and taking partial victories over the epic of total defeats. The Galician Néstor Rego failed the government over splitting the decrees, but assumed the yes vote: between a patch and leaving people unprotected, the BNG will vote to protect citizens. In the Senate control session, Félix Bolaños, Ángel Víctor Torres and Arcadi España pressed the PP not to reject on Friday proposals in favor of landlords and tenants that they themselves had introduced in projects already registered in Parliament; Bolaños urged the PP to take power from those who have too much and give it to those who have nothing, until Senate president Pedro Rollán called him to order. --- What remains unknown --- Almost everything remains unknown: the Junts vote, the Podemos vote, the Coalición Canaria confirmation, and whether the final texts arrive in time for Junts to even assess them. The investiture majority has been blocked for months, and the end-of-legislature terrain — which the government already expected to be frantic — has been precipitated by the eviction of Maricarmen Abascal and the emotional connection that has taken hold in the streets, alongside the mobilizations called by the Tenants' Union. In that setting, every vote counts and none can slip away: with 171 starting noes, the executive's margin of error is zero. --- Unanswered questions --- Will Junts back the first decree, or prefer to abstain and let the arithmetic speak? Will Podemos turn its four votes into a tool of street mobilization, or end up voting yes on a text it calls insufficient and split? Will Coalición Canaria confirm its yes after failing to receive the decrees all Tuesday afternoon? And what will the government do if Friday confirms the defeat of the second decree, already taken for granted by its own sources? --- EPM analysis --- The government's move is a deliberate gamble: bringing two decrees to Congress without a locked-in majority forces each partner to show its hand publicly before a social crisis already in the streets. The eviction of Maricarmen Abascal turned a parliamentary negotiation into a moral test, and the executive trusts that neither Junts nor Podemos will want to bear the cost of killing eviction protection. The risk, however, is that the gamble fails on the first text and leaves the government exposed before its own majority. The second decree, on automatic lease renewals, already looks like a lost cause, and that reveals how far the investiture majority has atomized: the partners no longer negotiate as a bloc, but as minorities with veto power. On Friday, Congress is not only voting on two housing decrees; it is voting on whether anything remains of the geometry that sustained this government three years ago. 📌 EPM Take: In EPM's view, the government has chosen the right ground and the wrong moment: eviction protection is the hardest text to vote against, but bringing it to Congress without the votes locked in turns a social measure into a parliamentary survival test. If the first decree falls, the cost will not be just the defeat of a text, but the certification that the investiture majority no longer exists. Junts and Podemos know this, which is why they play with suspense: their silence is their power. On Friday we will learn whether that power is used to build or to bring down.
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