Feijóo pledges 200,000 homes and 600,000 jobs a year in Spain

Feijóo pledges 200,000 homes and 600,000 jobs a year

Before seven hundred business leaders, Alberto Núñez Feijóo laid out his catalogue of economic promises: 200,000 homes a year and 600,000 jobs annually. The announcement, reported by Demócrata, was soon met with the first awkward question: with what money, and on what land, will those houses be built? The most common answer among those who trinc Galician economic policy was a single word: sotoboche.

The housing plan runs into the power grid

The flagship promise — 200,000 homes a year — ignores a bottleneck that cannot be solved with political will alone. In several Spanish regions, hundreds of already-built homes cannot be connected to the grid because it cannot handle the load. Before laying a single brick, the electricity infrastructure would need to be expanded and reinforced, a project that goes unmentioned in the speech.

Some argue that the PP (Spain's conservative People's Party) already proved its management skills in this area during its years in government in Galicia, where residential construction advanced strongly. The counterargument is that Galicia is not Spain: extrapolating the Galician model to the whole country ignores differences in land, regulation and demand.

600,000 jobs: where will the workers come from?

The second figure in the speech, 600,000 jobs a year, has a corollary the candidate did not address. If those jobs are created, someone will have to fill them. And that someone, according to the most common analysis, is not available in today's labour market. The uncomfortable conclusion is unavoidable: immigration policy would have to make a 180-degree turn from the rhetoric the party itself maintains in other forums.

The contradiction did not go unnoticed. Promising mass employment while at the same time hardening the line on immigration means holding two narratives that do not fit together. Someone will have to fill so many jobs, and it does not look like it will be the native working-age population.

The Zuckerberg precedent and the 600,000 million

The comparison with Mark Zuckerberg's announcement — 600,000 million in investment — spread quickly. The joke wrote itself: if the one making the promise is broke, the 600,000 will be jobs, not millions. The irony points to a familiar pattern: round figures, guaranteed headline impact, no fine print.

The scepticism is not unfounded. Public housing plans announced in Spain have rarely met their timelines. And when they fail, nobody resigns.

The electricity bill behind the promise

The power grid is the blind spot of any mass construction plan. Without connection capacity, developers do not build. Without construction, there are no jobs. The chain breaks at the first link, and that link cannot be fixed with a speech before business leaders.

Feijóo's announcement comes with an added burden: the feeling that it comes too late. One more season in opposition, and the promise remains just that, a promise.

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The numbers do not add up. 200,000 homes need land, a power grid and developers. 600,000 jobs need workers who are not there today. And the money, the money nobody mentions, is still missing from the speech.