Spain's PSOE scrapped the old rent controls it now champions

Spain's PSOE scrapped the old rent controls it now champions

The debate makes the point that the very party which dismantled the old rent control regime inherited from Francoism is now the one promising to shield tenants from eviction. According to one participant, the Boyer decree of 1985 and the subsequent LAU of 1994 —both passed under Socialist governments— did away with the mandatory lease extension and succession rights that protected long-standing tenants. Four decades later, the official narrative champions the exact opposite.

According to that same participant, under the rules the PSOE repealed, Mari Carmen would not have been evicted. What pushed that tenant onto the street was not Francoism, but the legal architecture that came afterwards. Whoever shouts "the antifascists are here" outside her home is, without realizing it, calling for a return to a framework a Socialist government buried.

What the Boyer decree changed in the rental market

The Boyer decree of 1985 removed the mandatory lease extension for new contracts and freed up rent increases. The LAU of 1994 finished the job: limited succession rights, shorter terms, and a market that began to move on price. The result, four decades on, is a rental stock that is more flexible and also more expensive. Nobody disputes anymore that it changed the board.

Some argue that without that liberalization there would not be enough supply and that going back to old rents would freeze the market. Against it weighs the argument that deregulation turned housing into a financial asset and pushed out middle-income tenants. Both things are true at once, and there lies the knot.

The PSOE scrapped the gender contempt aggravating factor before the gender violence law

According to one participant, the PSOE repealed the incivil aggravating factor of gender contempt that existed during Francoism and then enacted the gender violence law. First the inherited instrument is dismantled, then a new one is legislated under another name. The sequence is no accident: it is a way of governing that rewrites the past to justify the present.

The question hanging in the air is whether the new framework protects more or merely changes hands. Supply and price data suggest the problem has not been solved. The law changes, the eviction remains.

Who pays for the squatting and old rents narrative

Beneath the issue lies a class conflict that political language disguises. According to one participant, the 1980s beautiful people —socio-liberals with a license to get rich in the middle of a crisis— designed a framework that today turns against their own voters. The Socialist candidate in Granada with 18 properties and a "middle class" speech is the snapshot of that tension.

The full breakdown of how much rent has risen since deregulation, decade by decade, yields a surprising difference. But that is another story.

With these ingredients, the predictable outcome is that the PSOE will keep selling tenant protection while attacking landlords. Whether the resulting framework lowers the price or raises it remains to be seen. The newspaper archive, though, has already delivered its verdict.