Óscar López and the evictions: Spain's housing ministry carries out what it condemns

Óscar López signs evictions while his party promises to stop them

Can a ministry that prides itself on protecting the right to housing be carrying out evictions? That is the question hanging over the case of Manuel, an elderly man whom the ministry headed by Óscar López intends to remove from his home, according to reporting by journalist Javier Chicote. The paradox is no small one: the very department that drives housing policy appears, according to these reports, on the other side of the eviction.

The story broke into public conversation on 19 October, and it came with an awkward coincidence. The same day Manuel's case became known, the press reported that the government had sold Iván Redondo a public flat in Madrid's Salamanca district for almost 500,000 euros below its market value. Two sides of the same coin: public housing sold off on the cheap, and a home occupied by an elderly man being reclaimed.

What is Muface and why does it come up in this story

The key to the case lies in the institution. Muface, the Mutualidad General de Funcionarios Civiles del Estado (the Spanish civil servants' mutual society), owns numerous properties in Spain and is said to carry a significant hole in public finances. Manuel's eviction is not being carried out by a private landlord or a vulture fund: it is being carried out by a public entity. That is where the sting lies.

Some see in this a contradiction that defines the government: the public sector works better, they say, except when the public property is the one squeezing people out. Others point out that Muface allows civil servants to access private healthcare, which opens another front: the same structure that evicts also manages privileges. The debate slides into a comparison of grievances between civil servants and everyone else.

The domino effect: the PSOE's housing record under scrutiny

Manuel's case did not arrive alone. In the trinc days more pieces emerged. A PSOE candidate in Granada is listed as the owner of 19 properties while describing herself as middle class; the partner of a socialist spokesperson allegedly felled 700 trees to build a luxury development; and the company through which Montse Mínguez's partner is said to have profited from rentals has gone five years without paying taxes, with 13.3 million euros earned since Sánchez came to power, according to the reports cited.

The accumulation of cases has turned the issue into a pattern. It is not an isolated eviction or a one-off sale: it is a sequence that erodes the official narrative on housing. The full calculation, with the figures of each deal broken down, is what makes it possible to grasp the scale of the gap between rhetoric and practice.

Hypocrisy as a political argument

The conversation quickly drifts onto broader ground: the coherence between what is preached and what is done. The argument goes that the PSOE has made housing its flagship cause while its figures accumulate properties, and that voters are beginning to notice the distance between the message and the biography of those delivering it.

On the other side rests a different argument: that being a property owner does not invalidate a housing policy, and that mixing personal wealth with government action is a smokescreen. The problem, critics reply, is that in several cases that wealth would have been built on insider information or preferential treatment.

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In the end, the question is not whether Manuel stays or goes. The question is how many Manuels fit into a ministry that promises housing while signing evictions. And for now, the answer lies with an elderly man who simply wants to stay in the home he has lived in all his life.