The results are bittersweet and the governability of Spain now depends on complex pacts between the plurality of parties in the chamber.
If the PP, the force with the most votes, were to form a government —it needs the abstention of the PSOE—, with total certainty, it will repeal the Housing Law along with other texts approved during this legislature, as promised in its electoral program.
But Pedro Sánchez would have the option of being sworn in as president if he gets the support of the nationalist forces, and especially the abstention of Junts per Catalunya, which already voted against the Housing Law during its approval process in Congress.
A socialist victory would mean the continuity of the Housing Law in Spanish legislation, but not its consecration or its full application throughout the State.
Sumar, the formation of Yolanda Díaz, would fight during the following years of the legislature to modify the text with measures that had no place in the current one, such as the regulation of tourist housing or temporary rental. She will also urge the autonomies governed by the PP to apply the Housing Law.
Because part of the Law, in practice, does not depend on the State. Beyond the result of these general elections, it will be necessary to look at who governs in each territory to find out the possibility of applying measures on rent or if, on the contrary, they will remain on paper.
According to the legal text, the vast majority of the measures of the Housing Law depended on whether or not the autonomies declared their municipalities as areas with a stressed residential market.
Those regions where conservative formations already govern or will do so in the next legislature are not expected to declare them.
The regional elections of 28M dyed blue various communities previously governed by the left.
The Valencian Community and the Balearic Islands stand out, where the PP has managed to form a government in 2023, with the complicity of Vox, after eight years of legislatures led by the Socialist Party and other formations such as Compromís or MÉS per Mallorca. It is ruled out that they declare areas of tension in their confines.
In Andalusia, the PP took office on the Junta in 2019, after a long socialist history, so it would not be expected that these rent measures would be applied anytime soon.
Nor in regions like the Canary Islands, where the Canary Islands Coalition has replaced the PSOE after 28M
In Aragón or Extremadura, the acting president is still from the PSOE, but PP and Vox reached an absolute majority in the last regional elections.
The Basque Nationalist Party (EAJ-PNV), which governs the Basque Country, voted against the Housing Law in the Congress of Deputies.
The autonomous communities where the PSOE would be the main political force in the coming years are Asturias, Navarra and Castilla-La Mancha, but they have not yet ruled on their stressed areas.
However, Catalonia, governed by a coalition headed by Esquerra Republicana, is, so far, the only region that has announced and justified the declaration of 140 stressed areas to apply the measures of the Housing Law soon.
