From Berlin to Madrid, the housing crisis is bringing the left back to expropriation

The forced eviction of an elderly disabled woman, with dozens of police officers deployed, is certainly not a pretty sight. It took place on Thursday in the centre of Madrid; the victim was Mrs Maricarmen, an 87-year-old pensioner who had lived there for seventy years and who has been confined to a wheelchair for the past few months. A sad story, but also a splendid opportunity for those who, exploiting the distortions of the housing market, seek to push an agenda against the market and private property. Indeed, Maricarmen has become the figurehead of a Spanish left that felt the need to push Ceuta back to the fringes of the news and return to chanting old slogans in favour of price controls and proletarian expropriation. Yet the scene witnessed on Thursday in Madrid is merely a single frame in a longer film.

In Spain and Portugal, ‘ironclad’ tenancy agreements – with mandatory extensions transferable to children – date back to Franco and Salazar. The two Iberian dictators guaranteed the right to housing at the expense of others’ homes, including those of small property owners who, for decades, were forced to retain properties that were unusable and costly, with dire consequences for the market, the quality of the properties themselves and the scarcity of public social housing. The first wave of liberalisation in Spain came in 1985, under the first government of the socialist Felipe González. The Boyer Decree indexed rents to inflation and abolished the compulsory extension, but only for new contracts. In 1994, another law was introduced; González was still in government and the minister responsible (for Public Works) was Josep Borrell. The legislation abolished the inheritance of the old tenancy agreement: it passed to the widow but not to the children. There were two exceptions: a child with a disability rating of 65 per cent or a child over the age of 65. By the skin of her teeth, none of these exceptions protected Maricarmen, who has a 50 per cent disability and lost her mother in 2005; she therefore had two years to leave. Until a few years ago, nobody had told her anything, then an investment fund bought the property and increased the rent fivefold. The legal battle that ensued saw the courts rule, the police enforce the ruling, and politicians prove unable to find any alternatives. Madrid City Council had offered three different flats, but these days the fight is no longer about housing; it is a fight ‘for the city’ and against ‘gentrification’. Nobody trusts social housing on the outskirts any more.

The protests are now targeting the “foreign vulture fund” (though it appears to be Spanish). The Minister for Youth and Children, Sira Rego, of the Sumar movement, promises that expropriation will be discussed in the Council of Ministers. The slogan has regained momentum following Die Linke’s victory in Berlin, but the European Commission has also just launched the Affordable Housing Act, which contains controversial ideas such as a ban on purchasing a second home in areas with “high housing pressure”. Behind that regulation lies the heavy hand of another heavyweight in Spanish socialism: Teresa Ribera, former minister under Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and now Vice-President of the European Commission.

It is highly likely that Sánchez is preparing some emergency and symbolic measures – the sort that boost his standing abroad – after eight years in government during which he has made no changes to the legislative framework that left Maricarmen homeless. The latest attempt – the ‘rent relief’ decree in March – did not become law because the Prime Minister lacks a genuine parliamentary majority and the seven Catalan MPs from Junts voted against it. Now it seems they want to revisit the issue, because the Maricarmen ‘boomerang’ is flying dangerously back in their direction.