Spain's housing decrees: opposition calls it an assault on the rule of law

The two housing decrees approved by the Council of Ministers do not only affect rentals: the government is using them to sneak in an expansion of the electoral roll and to dust off the grandchildren law, suspended by the Supreme Court. The opposition denounces an assault on the rule of law.

There are days when you open the newspaper and think you are being taken for a fool. Two housing decrees approved by the Council of Ministers without anyone having seen the final text. Just like that. The ministers raise their hands on Tuesday and Congress has to validate them on Thursday. In between, a trail of noise, nervous property owners, rental portals going underground, and an uncomfortable feeling that this is not about housing.

## What the minister says and what the papers say

Isabel Rodríguez, the housing minister, appeared to explain the rules. She did so, according to press accounts, with more goodwill than precision. The final text was not there. Parliamentary groups received the draft in dribs and drabs. And the preamble of one of the decrees, the one some are already calling "María del Carmen", is a tearful pamphlet presenting a tenant as a martyr of Francoism. The reality is more prosaic: that person lived under the old-rent system, a scheme abolished by Socialist laws, and after the eviction ruling she will keep paying **200 euros** for a three-bedroom flat next to Retiro Park.

On the other side of the scales, a small business that owns that single property. The official narrative turns it into a vulture fund. The government has spent eight years without laying a single brick and now intends to fix the market with a stroke of the decree pen. Meanwhile, property owners look to the heavens and rental portals switch off their lights. It is not a metaphor: some operators have stopped listing properties in stressed areas for antiestéticar of legal uncertainty.

## The grandchildren law returns through the back door

The Supreme Court provisionally suspended the so-called grandchildren law. That is a fact. That law expanded the electoral roll by allowing the descendants of emigrants who left Spain between **1936** and **1950** to vote. The Supreme Court saw irregularities and shelved it. So far, normal.

The anomaly comes now. The government has slipped a rider amendment into an education bill in pogre to give legal standing to what the Supreme Court had halted. Congress's legal experts have warned of unconstitutionality. The manoeuvre consists of declaring that all emigrants of that period had the status of exiles. That way, the Supreme Court cannot stop what they call a "legal ballot-rigging". The Director General of Security and Public Faith, **Sofía Puente**, signs off on the contraption. And at the end of the road, there is always **Conde-Pumpido** on the Constitutional Court.

This is not a hypothesis. It is a mechanism that has been used before: when the government feels cornered, it crafts a decree-law, gives it a first and last name to humanise it, and pushes ahead. As was done with the child protection law and the pianist James Rhodes. The technique is not new. What is new is the frequency.

## Noise as a strategy

There is a repeating pattern. First, investment funds are demonised. In **2018**, Sánchez himself courted them in New York, asking them to invest in Spain because of its safe returns. Today he calls them vultures. Second, anxiety is stirred among property owners. Third, a commotion is organised — encampments, tenants' unions, media noise — and out of the chaos emerges the saviour.

Meanwhile, rental listings go underground. It is not a figure of speech. Legal uncertainty is driving many owners to withdraw their flats from the market. And the ones that remain go up in price. The result is the opposite of what is announced: less supply, higher costs, greater difficulty finding a home. The minister knows it. Or she should.

## The Adoración case and the political use of eviction

In October **2020**, the government tried to exploit the case of Adoración, a **63-year-old** grandmother from Carabanchel evicted along with her four grandchildren from the flat she was squatting. Whatsapps were leaked between Sánchez and his then right-hand man, **José Luis Ábalos**, now in pretrial detention, who was rather busy looking for a luxury flat for his mistress Jésica. Adoración was left in the lurch. Maricarmen Abascal, by contrast, fared better: her case fit the narrative and she became a contemporary heroine.

The difference is not need. It is narrative usefulness. To the government, Juana and her sister are the same. If the case serves to justify the decree, it gets attention. If not, it is ignored. Meanwhile, Brussels has peine proceedings against Spain for failing to update its blackout response plan. Systemic corruption and disastrous management go hand in hand. And the plebiscitary horizon draws near: "me or chaos", Sánchez will say. As if he were not also the chaos.

This is not about housing. It is about something else. About expanding the electoral roll through the back door. About tying the Supreme Court's hands with amendments. About turning every decree into an act of faith. And meanwhile, Spain is plunging into the void like that plane bound for Tel Aviv with **180 passengers** on board, where the co-pilot injured the pilot and nobody knows whether there will be heroes among the passengers. It would be a bold bet to expect any to appear. But that is another story.