The dispute between PSOE and Podemos over the cap on the rental price of housing has risen in tone during the first day of the Mobile World Congress, which today opened its doors at the Fira de l'Hospitalet.
The mayoress of Barcelona, Ada Colau, already sparked the debate on Sunday night, when she took advantage of her speech at the opening dinner of the congress to demand that the Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, regulate rental prices because "they are a great barrier for social cohesion and prevent many young people and talented people from staying in the city”.
The message directly questioned Nadia Calviño, First Vice President of the Government and Minister of Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation, who expressed her perplexity early in the morning in an interview with TV3: "I don't know if [Colau] is trying to throw balls outside, looking for other types of responsibilities to explain what their management of housing policy in Barcelona has been since 2015”, he commented, recalling that municipalities have instruments to facilitate access to housing for the population.
During the same intervention, Calviño has ruled out limiting the rental price to 3%, a proposal that Podemos has been defending. “I don't think any citizen believes that all the difficulties we have in the housing framework are resolved by putting a sentence in a law. I believe that what the citizens want from us is not that we give messages that are easy and that at a given moment may be attractive but do not solve the problems”. The 2% limit approved last year by the coalition government is an "absolutely extraordinary" element of protection, he said, which intends to respond to inflation until the end of 2023.
Upon hearing Calviño's words, Mayor Colau responded by raising her tone even more: “Calviño is the most neoliberal wing of the current government and has always been in favor of not putting limits on housing speculation. But I want to remember that Sánchez is the president and that five years ago, here, he promised to put a cap to prevent rent abuses. Let him show that he is the president and not Calviño ”, Colau snapped during her attendance at the first day of Mobile. The mayoress has also said that Calviño has acted in "bad faith" and has "shown little sensitivity" in the problem of access to housing.
In the opinion of the leader of the Comuns, who repeats as mayor for the third consecutive legislature, abusive rent increases greatly enrich small and large businessmen, while many families have to allocate 50 to 60% of their salary to the living place.
Given the words of the mayoress, Calviño has reacted again, this time in statements to the press in Mobile, and has defended that the Government has taken measures to alleviate the rise in prices. The Housing Law, she has said, "incorporates important improvements" to facilitate access to housing for the most vulnerable and young people. In addition, she has maintained that the Executive has worked so that the public social park of the State reinforces "the protection of tenants and gives instruments to the autonomous communities and town halls, also on the control of tourist homes."
The vice-president recalled that the Government, through Sareb, made 150 homes in the public park available to Barcelona City Council, and that the central Executive is working with the Government to incorporate 900 more public homes in Catalonia, agreements that They were already in force and are in the process of being renewed.
In Calviño's opinion, the regulation of housing is a matter for the municipalities and autonomous communities. Catalonia approved in 2020 a regulation to cap the rental price, which was partially annulled by the Constitutional Court, considering that the regulation invaded state competences.
