The Minister of the Presidency, Relations with the Courts and Democratic Memory, Félix Bolaños, has called on the Catalan deputies in Congress to this Friday "attend to the social outcry that exists in Catalunya to approve housing measures."
The minister intervened this Wednesday in the first day of 'BCN! Desperta', organized by Crónica Global and Metrópoli Abierta with the collaboration of El Español, where he criticized the liberal model considering that it "leads to a market that expels millions of Spaniards from the right to housing."
Bolaños has admitted that the residential market in Spain "does not function correctly" because even the middle class cannot "access a house, neither in ownership nor in rental" and has defended the two royal decree laws approved on Tuesday in the Council of Ministers, about which he explained that the Government has been working "since before the summer."
As he detailed, those decrees include public policies with a marked social-democratic character, which reinforce the protection of tenants through anti-eviction measures, two-year extensions in rental contracts, and tax bonuses, while incorporating a "powerful" package of improvements in benefits for small property owners: "We have sought balance."
He also emphasized that the government of Pedro Sánchez promoted in 2022 the first housing law of democracy, which is not being applied in the autonomous communities governed by Vox and the PP, where, he denounced, the price of housing is increasing in an "unbridled" manner.
In contrast, he pointed out that in Catalunya, during the first two years of rent control, rents decreased by 4.5% in Barcelona and that, in the first quarter of this year, rents in the Catalan capital have reduced by 1.3% compared to the same period of the previous year, although he admitted that perhaps that decrease "is not enough."