Aguirre urges freeing up land and attracting migrant labour

Freeing up land and bringing in migrant labour: the Aguirre plan

Bringing in bricklayers and carpenters from abroad, trained before arriving at vocational schools in Africa, to build the homes the country says it cannot build. Esperanza Aguirre's proposal to tackle the housing problem has two mutually dependent legs: freeing up land and opening up the workforce to migrant workers. The starting diagnosis is simple: without people willing to climb the scaffolding, any construction plan remains on paper.

The counter came quickly. If workers are brought in, future tenants are brought in too, and each one needs a roof. The same measure that promises more labour supply pressures housing demand. More bricklayers, more flats to occupy. The contradiction, pointed out from various sides, is the crux of a debate that mixes land, wages and immigration policy.

What the proposal sets out and where the labour shortage comes from

The idea combines two levers: freeing up land so there is more buildable terrain and filling the trades gap with vocational training at origin. It is argued that there is a shortage of bricklayers, carpenters and plumbers, and that this bottleneck alone would be enough to halt any construction drive. There are also those who defend that freeing up land makes sense in itself, regardless of who ends up laying the bricks. Free up land, yes; the rest, we'll see.

Where agreement breaks down is on the second leg. Selling the plan as the way for workers from abroad to fill the trades amounts, for part of the conversation, to admitting that the generational handover has been broken for years. And not everyone accepts that starting point.

More workers, more housing: the trap of the recipe itself

The most repeated argument is that bringing in labour without first solving housing supply is adding fuel to the fire. If more workers arrive, more homes will be needed, and those homes must be built beforehand, not afterwards. Anyone who flips the recipe finds that the measure eats itself: to build housing you need housing for those who will build it.

On the other side weighs a long-standing argument: during the bubble cycle, construction already depended on workers from abroad, and it is argued that a good part of the local workforce does not accept those jobs. If none of that has changed, freeing up land without touching labour supply would leave the blueprints on the table.

Are workers missing or are wages missing?

One current places the problem far from a shortage of people. If the trades paid what the harshness of the work demands, and with decent conditions, willing labour would appear. The question, put bluntly, is what about raising wages?. From that perspective, the bottleneck would not be physical, but a matter of price.

Another line is harsher on the underlying diagnosis: it denies that arms are missing and points out that the jobs created are precarious, rotating and of low added value, more a contribution gap than a solution. Added to that criticism is the political reading: that the PP should propose these recipes is seen as the legacy of an exhausted model, one that confused brick with growth. And in the opposite corner, half-jokingly, some conclude that all this will end up being solved by robots.

With construction lacking a clear succession and housing as a supply problem, the proposal leaves an open question: what if the bottleneck was never labour, but the price we are willing to pay for it?