Junts brings down the Sánchez government by rejecting the housing decrees following the Maricarmen affair

Today, Friday 2 October, Spain witnessed a ‘Groundhog Day’ scenario. This is because the Madrid parliament had already rejected a decree against evictions back in April, again due to the ‘no’ vote from the Junts MPs, the Catalan independence party which, in 2023, agreed to provide external support to a PSOE government (which had lost the elections) in exchange for laws more favourable to regional autonomy and an amnesty for convicted leaders (or those still awaiting trial for the 2017 secession attempt). The scene was repeated today over the two housing decrees inspired by the ‘Maricarmen case’ – the eviction of an elderly tenant that brought hundreds of outraged activists onto the streets. Junts has been making it clear to Sánchez for at least a year that he can no longer count on their votes.

Exactly one year ago, the bill to reduce the weekly working hours had also failed in the same way; not to mention the Budget Bills, which have never seen the light of day in this parliamentary term, and Sánchez had by then reached the point of not even tabling them, as happened last year and as will probably happen this year. The Socialist Prime Minister chose to ignore the collapse of his parliamentary majority and opt for a ‘we’ll carry on regardless’ approach, but the problems have gradually come to a head. Far-left activists, who are demanding measures on housing that are draconian to say the least, are shouting at him, ‘dónde está el gobierno progresista’ (‘where is the progressive government?’). In fact, there isn’t one. In the corridors of Congress, the leader of the People’s Party (PP), Alberto Núñez Feijóo, put it this way: “Sánchez has neither parliament nor the support of the people.” He was speaking to the media at the end of a plenary session in which everyone was vying to take the floor “in the name of the people” and “the public”.

In reality, all political parties – starting with the largest ones – are like whales harbouring within their bellies the very enemy they pretend to be targeting. A study recently published by the CIS (Centre for Sociological Studies, which is very close to the government) and reported in recent days by the daily newspaper El Mundo reveals that both the PSOE and the PP rely on voters who, in 81 per cent of cases, own property. This is the Spain of small property owners; many of them welcome generic state intervention ‘against speculation’, but are far less supportive of measures affecting private property, for example when it comes to increasing inheritance tax on property. The result is that everyone latches onto the bogeyman of ‘vulture funds’, strictly defined as ‘foreign’ (if not ‘Zionists’), even though the company that was trying to reach an agreement with elderly Maricarmen was a small-to-medium-sized Spanish enterprise with eight employees, whilst in 2024 the Madrid government sold a Ministry of Finance building to BlackRock for over 200 million euros to turn it into 153 luxury flats and a student residence.

But now the time has come for Sánchez to ride the runaway horse of public opinion, although it may not be in his best interests to take a course that is too ‘Melenchon-esque’. A large demonstration is planned for Saturday in Madrid, but the intention of the various organisations involved is to dismantle the camp at Puerta del Sol in order to spread the protest throughout Spain. If Sánchez decides to bring forward the elections, he can only hope that the most radical left will see his party as the only one capable of standing up to the right. The polls show them in the lead: the PP and Vox will vie for the largest share of the electorate, whilst the left-wing parties will fight over the ‘anti-fascist’ tactical vote.

As for the regional parties, we had a taste of things during today’s debate in the Chamber. Catalan Left voted in favour, and its spokesperson, Gabriel Rufián, devoted his entire speech to accusing the Junts spokesperson of harbouring unsavoury property interests. For its part, Junts fears the spectre of the Catalan Alliance, the party founded by the mayor of Ripoll, Sílvia Orriols, which has been surging in the polls for some time and is striking fear into everyone’s hearts. PP MP Juan Bravo, the first to speak in the Chamber this morning, began by thanking the police officers (who were outside protecting the Congress building from the ‘indignados’ march) on the feast day of their patron saints: the Holy Guardian Angels. Between now and the elections, however, everyone will be haunted by their own guardian vampire.