Sol camp: cheap rents and the Franco myth

Sol camp: cheap rents and the Franco myth

The Sol camp has put the price of housing back at the centre of public debate. The demand is simple: secure, affordable rents and cheap flats. Any party would sign up to that programme. The discomfort comes when someone asks who builds that stock of social housing, and the most repeated answer points to a period that was not exactly democratic.

What the Sol camp is demanding

Three things, and they are worth stating plainly: rents that do not swallow your salary, stable contracts and public housing at prices not set by the market. None of that is an ideological eccentricity. In a tight rental market, anyone who has signed a recent contract knows what a square metre costs in a capital city.

Did Franco build more social housing than democracy did?

It is the phrase that inflames the issue. It is claimed that the dictator Francisco Franco built more social housing than the democratic governments after 1978. The comparison is thrown out as if it were an unquestionable fact and, like all simplifications, hides a kernel of truth inside a good deal of historical spin.

Some take it to the extreme and claim that the 1978 Regime has not built 'a single social housing unit' or a single reservoir. Taken literally, that is false, and those who repeat it know it. The serious debate is not whether democracy built zero, but whether the volume of public development in recent decades is up to the problem it claims to solve. There, a pass is not guaranteed.

It is worth adding the context that is usually missing: the 'social' housing of the Franco era was built in a country with a different urban structure, without press freedom and with centralised plans. Comparing raw figures between that Spain and today's is an exercise as popular as it is misleading.

Real estate as the 'Wild West'

The diagnosis pulsating beneath the protest is less historical and more down-to-earth. Some warn that the property market is getting worse, that the chaos benefits unscrupulous operators and that every square metre is going to be squeezed without mercy. You don't have to go along with the crude generalisation to recognise the tension: scarce supply, pent-up demand and prices that refuse to fall.

That is the dust on which the political paradox is built. If what is being demanded is protected housing and capped rents, some point out with a smirk that VOX, which boasts of defending housing for ordinary people, should back the camp instead of looking the other way. The irony, as almost always, points more at those who stay silent than at those who protest.

What comes next

The real debate is not Franco yes or Franco no. It is how much public rental housing a country that has spent decades relying entirely on private bricks and mortar can actually build. Until that is resolved, the comparison with the dictatorship will keep working as a headline, even if only by way of anger. It is fair to expect camps to multiply and housing to remain at the centre of the political battle; what is less clear is whether public supply will arrive in time to defuse the argument.