Vox tells Ibex bosses: deport migrants to make housing cheaper

Vox takes its deportation plan to the Ibex to make housing cheaper

On September 10, Vox's economic spokesperson, José María Figaredo, sat down for lunch with executives from Ibex-listed companies and major real estate firms and explained his recipe for the housing crisis: before building, you have to “lower demand.” How? By expelling from the country a large share of the migrants who have arrived in recent years. “With 1.5 million fewer immigrants, there would be less pressure on housing,” he told them, according to three people present. The scene was revealed by El Mundo. A party that publicly promises a hard line was privately pitching its plan to the business lobby.

Vox's recipe: expel before building

The lunch was organized by the Instituto de Estudios Económicos, CEOE's think tank. At the table sat executives from companies such as Santander, Iberdrola and Mercadona; representatives of the big construction firms grouped in Seopan; electricity industry associations; funds; private equity; the real estate sector; and several economists. Figaredo advocated boosting construction with “much more private supply,” but put a prior step first: reducing demand.

His headline figure: “7.8 million people have entered Spain since 2018.” In his view, Spanish growth rests on population increases and the model should shift toward “growing through industry and efficiency, not through population.” Along the way, he linked the saturation of public services to migrant arrivals.

Even they don't agree on the exact figure. Asked about the 1.5 million, the party qualifies: what was said is that if 1.5 million keep arriving each year, it will be impossible to meet demand, “not even in our wildest dreams.” But mass deportation remains on the table, with three profiles: those who come to commit crimes, those who live off subsidies, and those who don't integrate. “It will be 1.5 million, 10 or 100,000. We have no benchmark,” they admit.

Why the business lobby said no

Some attendees were baffled. Especially those familiar with property and credit. “We told him that regulated immigration in our country is essential and that the housing problem is not so simple,” one attendee admits. The diagnosis they gave him was different: the imbalance dates back to 2009, when private housing construction ground to a halt.

There were more warnings. Curbing foreign purchases would be a mistake, because foreign funds underpin domestic jobs. Translation: part of the business they claim to protect actually depends on the very capital they want to scare away.

The numbers that undermine the demand argument

A real estate representative put numbers on the table. Each year more than 200,000 new households are formed and only about 90,000 homes are built. The deficit is growing unchecked and the Banco de España now speaks of a shortfall of more than 700,000 homes. If the problem is demand, the root cause lies less with those arriving than with those who cannot find housing.

That leaves the gap between households and new construction wide open, a breakdown that does not close even under the most optimistic scenario and that should be read in full before blaming a single factor.

The uncomfortable hypothesis: business doesn't have workers to spare

This is the reading defended by several participants in the debate: if the business lobby resists deportations, it is not only out of scruples, but because its bottom line depends on a constant flow of workers and new consumers. The more people willing to work for less, the more margin. And the more population, the more demand for everything they sell. Under that model, the Spanish middle class bears the cost of a system that needs cheap labor to keep from becoming more expensive.

The crux: cheap labor and seats

Politics also came up at lunch. He was asked whether Vox will govern with the PP and implement these measures. He replied that he still cannot agree an economic program with the PP, because it will depend on the weight of its seats: “We still don't know what our shares will be worth in the next government coalition.” He then set out energy proposals, a big cut in IRPF (Spain's personal income tax), and asked companies for “ideas” for his deregulation plan.

As several messages in the debate noted, the underlying contradiction is textbook: a nationalist party that promises to protect the domestic market but coexists with the liberal instinct of its electorate. And a business lobby that, according to the very diagnosis it gave Figaredo, has no intention of giving up a model built on a constant arrival of workers. The clash is not ideological; it is about the bottom line.

Who sustains the country, in figures

Outside the room, the debate cites press data from May 2023: a Spain with more than 17 million immigrants and one in three births now of foreign origin, with net increases equivalent to adding a city like Salamanca every quarter. And it is recalled that a country of 25 million natives, ten million of them elderly and only five million under 25, has a serious problem of generational replacement. Demographics and housing do not mix well.

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For several participants in the debate, with this material the only possible pact is one of inaction: no one is going to give up the labor pool that sustains margins. Asking business leaders for permission to deport was not a communications error; it was an act of surrender to the only voter that, apparently, counts.