Government approves indefinite rental decree without votes

Two housing decrees and an indefinite rental that is not law

Can the government force a landlord to sign an indefinite rental? Approved in the Consejo de Ministros (Spanish cabinet), yes; in force, not yet. Among the two royal housing decrees the government pushed through this Tuesday is an agreement for the automatic renewal of rentals, the formula that ties the landlord to renewing the contract with no end date. The trap is in the packaging: that measure travels in a second decree, the one that gathers the demands of the Sindicato de Inquilinas (tenants' union), and that one has not been voted on. To ratify it, the executive has requested an extraordinary plenary session this Friday.

What's in the housing decree the government does expect to pass

The first text is easier to digest. It includes eviction protection extended to 2030, regulation of seasonal and room rentals, a ban on vulture funds buying housing until 2028 and a two-year extension for existing contracts ending before 31 December 2028. It is the package La Moncloa hopes to ratify with the support or abstention of PNV and Junts, the partners who sustain Pedro Sánchez's investiture.

The indefinite rental nobody has voted on yet

The second decree is the uncomfortable one. That's where automatic renewal lives, which according to the government itself may not command the same consensus. It doesn't. Some argue, citing Junts, that negotiations are going badly and that their priority is protecting small landlords. With no simple majority assured, automatic renewal is, for now, a draft with headlines.

Barcelona: from 20,202 rental flats to 2,414

Here are the numbers that, according to data shared in the debate, spoil the party. With measures of this type and even harsher ones underway, Barcelona's rental supply went, always according to those figures, from 20,202 flats in November 2020 to 6,293 in January 2022, 4,044 in September 2024 and 2,414 in September 2026. Strangling the market does not make it cheaper: it leaves it without product. Applying the recipe to any other market with capped prices is easy to predict, and the result is not exactly cheerful.

Vulture funds and small landlords in the same bag

Another discussion the text opens: putting in the same category an investment fund that buys entire blocks and an individual who rents out a room to make ends meet. Some argue that the rule does not distinguish — nor is it interested — between the two, and that the tenant ends up paying for that equalisation, because every landlord who leaves the market reduces the supply everyone depends on.

Maricarmen, the Sol camp and an hour's delay

Behind the rush is a specific scene. The Consejo de Ministros started an hour late because Sumar's ministers delayed the meeting to force their PSOE partners to sign the measures of the Sindicato de Inquilinas, the entity organising the camp in Puerta del Sol. The trigger was the eviction of Maricarmen, an 87-year-old woman with reduced mobility who had lived for seven decades in Madrid's Retiro district. Some sum it up in one phrase: you have to be crazy to put a flat up for rent in this country.

And here the problem continues: if the aim was to expand supply, the Barcelona series has been pointing the opposite way for several years. Nothing is settled, mind you. First it has to be voted on. And in Congress, as almost always, that is where the narrative falls apart.