Alicia del Río (Tenants' Union): "I hope there are no fascists in Congress, but we can twist the arm of the landlords"

QUESTION: What assessment do you make of the encampment that has recently ended in Sol?

ANSWER: It has been the confirmation of this new cycle, a real point of no return. What happened with Maricarmen, everything it has awakened, has been an incredible space of counter-power and visibility. A lot of people who were not organized have come together and have discovered the movement for housing, grassroots organizations, and also that the next step was the general strike.

"They have evicted the encampment but you cannot evict everything we have learned and everything that has changed the country"

That it has ended with police violence is terrible and it has to be condemned. What matters is that what happened cannot be evicted. Everything we have learned this month, everything that has changed our country this month is 'non-evictable'. In every neighborhood committee or strike committee that exists now, the spirit of the encampment lives on. And what we also have to ask ourselves is what Madrid is going to do to resolve the serious problem it has, not only of housing but of homelessness. There were quite a few homeless people who are the ones who have been evicted at night with tremendous violence. What are we going to do to resolve this problem that exists in the city of Madrid?

P: What is it that has changed this country in this month and a bit?

R: That there is no need to keep waiting for the turn of a progressive government to do something or for there to be elections in which to put a ballot. Of course it is important who is in institutions, but this battle is not going to be won there. Decree-laws were brought before the Council of Ministers through popular power. We managed to have indefinite contracts, which seemed unthinkable. And how were they overturned? Well, because the employers' side has been making calls up until the very last minute.

The next thing is to stop production, to cause economic damage to the employers, to put on the table that we are capable of stopping everything. That is how we can win rights. There will be no such conquest without a very hard battle. We have learned that it is possible to wage this battle and that we have to keep escalating.

P: This is an atypical general strike call, for housing, even if other labor demands are mixed in. What goals do you set yourselves?

R: It is very atypical, very singular, it is historic. For the unity we have achieved with all labor unionism, from the nationalists to the most combative and the majority groups, but also because we are going on the offensive.

"The strike is not an end in itself; this is the opening of a cycle in which strikes are going to be essential"

We are not defending ourselves from the latest harmful cut, but we are going to win rights. We have driven it forward through the unions of tenants, but today it belongs to the social majority. It has a very clear objective: to inaugurate this new cycle of social struggles from below.

NEW PRICE REGULATION

Q: What is the program of demands?

A: One of the key measures is the reduction of rents. It cannot be that the price is absolutely free, that no one can buy a home, that no one can pay rent, that half of our salary goes to a room that before was worth an entire apartment.

Q: Now there is price regulation. Do you propose applying it in all communities?

A: It is not enough. The index of the Housing Law, which was born dead, reaches 2024 when prices have been rising since 2014. It is an index whose prices leave us impoverished. We have to generate a new index so that we do not give more than 30% of our salary to rent. And, of course, that it is not left to the autonomous communities to do whatever they want.

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Of course it is important who is in the institutions, but this battle will not be won there

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In addition, it has to apply to all types of landlords. No one would find it normal that if your company is small they pay you less than the SMI or you have fewer vacations, because labor rights are the same for all working people. Tenants’ rights must be the same for all tenants, whether your landlord is Blackstone or Manolita Pérez.

INDEFINITE CONTRACTS

Another measure that we have put on the table is indefinite contracts. How can it be that we keep paying and that our landlord can tell us 'out on the street, your contract is over'? If you fulfill your part, which is paying and being a normal tenant, as the majority social of this country does, it cannot be that they can throw us out. That has very serious consequences for people’s health, for the education of children, for settling in…

"There are a lot of working people who have bought the ideas of fascism by being told that the GDP was going great while people were being evicted and losing purchasing power"

It is a measure that would not have been possible without Sol’s encampment and without those massive mobilizations. How can it be that the Partido Popular opposes such a basic measure? And if the PSOE doesn’t have a union behind it, and popular power also doesn’t want it to come out.

HOUSES ARE FOR LIVING

Right now there are a lot of houses used in antisocial ways. How can it be that in an unprecedented housing crisis, with people who are homeless, people living in warehouses, in storage rooms, entire families in one room, and meanwhile there are houses that are empty, or there are illegal tourist apartments, or any antisocial use. That could end up overnight with some very strong taxes and, if they don’t work, there is a threat of expropriation. Imagine there’s a pandemic and someone shuts down a hospital and people are dying in the street. Housing has to be so that people can live.

The same thing applies to buying things. Right now a normal family in this country can’t buy a home because the price is through the roof and it is competing with an investor. Most of the houses are being bought without a mortgage. The houses that are bought in this country have to be for living because, if not, the market will be dominated by that speculative demand that won’t stop growing. Speculative demand has to be eliminated and residential demand has to be protected.

PUBLIC HOUSING PARK

P: Do they think it is necessary to increase supply by building more homes?

R: Homes have to be built, but if it is done badly we can make the situation worse. There are very interested speeches because they are going to line the pockets of the same construction companies and the same people are going to take kickbacks. We have to build with public construction companies that ensure that the homes are public and put up for social rent, in a use-assignment model, or in new housing models that guarantee stability. The PP wants to build a million homes. But if we don’t lower the contracts, we make indefinite contracts, we ban speculative demand and we build in a public way… who are they going to be for? The investors will buy them.

We also cannot wait four years for the construction. It will be built where it is needed, but first all the housing that was public and protected must be recovered that ends up in the hands of vulture funds. There are formats of total expropriation, expropriation of use or of intervention through the right of first refusal and repurchase when there are speculative purchases and sales. All of that can be done and the Government has not been brave. In April 5,000 homes that come from the developments that (the former mayor of Madrid) Ana Botella gave to Blackstone have moved to Brookfield in April. A Government that is positioned with the right to housing intervenes in that purchase and recovers it. However, they positioned themselves with rent-seeking.

THE FIGHT AGAINST FUNDS

Q: What could the Government have done?

A: Intervene and buy them at least at the same price with the right of first refusal and repurchase. We could also talk about expropriation for public interest. There were 5,000 families at risk, and they remain at risk; who defends those families that are organized in the tenants’ union of Madrid? They themselves, themselves, together with the union—the only guarantee that they have now is 5,000 families who were the awardees of public housing and protected housing,

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If we don’t make indefinite contracts and we prohibit speculative purchase… who will buy the housing that is built? Investors will buy it"

Their only guarantee now, after being awardees of public and protected housing, is that they are affiliated with the tenants’ union and that they are fighting and disobeying Brookfield’s eviction order. At the beginning they said that the extension (of the contracts) didn’t work for them. Now they are silent, but they keep trying to evict people.

Q: They have become what many parties would now call 'tenant squatters'.

A: That term was made up because our union strategy of disobedience 'We stay' has been very successful. Your contract ends and they want to kick you out. But why? To speculate or to put a rise of one hundred or two hundred euros on you that you also can’t afford? Or three hundred. The law is unfair; it is made only for speculation and the right to housing comes first.

The strategy is to keep paying, keep staying in the homes, and begin putting pressure to negotiate. And it has given us very significant victories, like the first collective bargaining agreement of tenants in 2021 against Blackstone. And eighty families that were pioneers in this disobedience in the face of abusive rent increases, when the contract ended, renewed it without increases.

The term 'inquiocupa' tries to stigmatize these people, who are heroes, who are brave, who are defending the right to housing, and who have had to face very strong hate speech as if they were criminals.

THE PREPARATION OF THE STRIKE

Q: It has been 14 years since Spain has had a general strike called by the major unions. What is the preparation for the strike like? Are you worried about a smaller turnout than expected?

A: No, for us it is historic. We have managed to get all the actors we wanted to join, from sovereignist unionism, which is also historic to do this on the same day as in the rest of the State, the class and combative unions. Each actor has different strategies and different models of unionism, but we have agreed on everything with a lot of effort. The strike does not belong to any of these actors. No one can claim it. It is a popular strike, a mass strike; it is labor, it is social, and it is the demands of the tenants' unions that we represent the tenant population with, right now, in this country.

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The PSOE has very strong alliances with the rentier lobby and Podemos and Sumar have been co-responsible"

The accusation is aimed at all governments, each one with its responsibility: from those who boosted the progressive government to those who are in the opposition now. Everyone has responsibility, or each one at the level of government they have. The Community and the Madrid City Council also do as well.

Evidently, the strike itself is not an end. This is the opening of a cycle in which strikes are going to be essential, grassroots unions, the fabric in the neighborhoods, that alliance that we are building… We are going out to put up posters with the movement in defense of healthcare that are there every day fighting, with the feminist movement that changed the history of this country with its strikes, with the striking workers in education, with the movement for Palestine…

That is already a victory because that is going to transcend the strike of November 11. That well is going to be left there to face whatever comes. Whoever governs, we have to continue winning the right to housing. And those structures that have been created to support the strike are the biggest, the biggest victory. This new cycle is going to be a cycle of struggles from the street.

Q: What would you tell a person with a more precarious position or who has problems at their job, or fears, or doubts, or even who can’t go on strike because they provide an essential service?

A: First of all, and most importantly, get informed, because in this country there is a erasure of trade union and labor rights that is frightening. You can go to the labor union that has in your workplace, go to the website that we have made, huelgaporlavivienda.org, go to the strike committee in your neighborhood… Go wherever it is best for you to ask. There is a lot of people who are going to have their fears taken away.

Then it is true that there are people who can’t afford to go on strike because they are without papers, because they are in a very precarious situation… and I’m talking about very informal jobs, because firing over a strike is illegal. Let no one feel guilty for having such a precarious situation that it doesn’t allow them to exercise the right to strike. We are all part of the same struggle.

Also remember that there is a consumer strike that is very important, so they can participate in that strike and, of course, they can participate from the strike committee in their neighborhood or from wherever those people want. Simply talking about the strike is already working for the strike.

LEGISLATIVE TERM REVIEW AND TOWARD 29N

Q: What do you expect from the elections of 29N?

A: Our plan goes beyond election calendars because it is a union plan, a plan of popular power that continues in motion whoever governs. It’s true that there is a fear, shared with many actors in this society, that fascists might come into Government because that will mean a brutal rollback of rights. All our migrant and racialized colleagues will be in danger, our trans colleagues… For going to end up facing an eviction, now they already fine you and maybe we’ll end up in jail, held as prisoners.

Let’s fight fascism face to face. We say that we have to talk with people, because there is a lot of working people who have bought the ideas of fascism due to a very serious mistake by the progressive Government, which is telling people that things are going well when they weren’t. That GDP is doing amazingly, that wages are going up, and that we were a very powerful economy while people face evictions, lose purchasing power, lose labor rights, and suffer a deterioration of public services…

"The PSOE has left us sold in Madrid without a Housing Law in a partisan campaign"

There are many people who, being precariously employed workers, have chosen a terrible mistake: to think that the fault lies with migrant people, or young people, or pensioners. That’s what we have to fight on the streets and make that person see that our enemy is up there, not your Arab neighbor who lives worse than you and pays more in rent than you and has fewer rights than you. The enemy is in those who monopolize housing, or those who raise the price of the grocery basket, and those who want to cut our sick leave and time off work due to illness, as the right says.

Q: The Government has justified many times during this term that it hasn’t gone far enough due to parliamentary arithmetic. What assessment do you make of that?

A: When you govern a country, you are responsible for the situation that is happening. Excuses about parliamentary arithmetic don’t work. If not, then call elections. We’ve had to bring down a government over an eviction. The PSOE loves playing both sides, saying that it is in favor of the right to housing while we remember what it said (José Luis) Ábalos (former Minister of Public Works and at the time responsible for Housing), that housing was a market asset. The real estate employers’ association has been chaired by Joan Clos, former mayor of Barcelona, and today it is Helena Beunza, former general secretary of Housing. The PSOE has very strong alliances with the rent-seeking lobby; it is a rent-seeking party since the 'Decreto Boyer' that removed indefinite contracts up to the Housing Law with a terrible loophole for speculation: not only that it would not be applied in certain communities—here in the people of Madrid we are very angry about being left as if sold out by a partisan campaign—but also that the fraud involving seasonal contracts and room contracts is left in place.

PSOE has done that, and Sumar and Podemos are also co-responsible for that when they were in government. You are responsible for the measures that come out when you are in Government and, if you don’t like them, you will have to make more noise or you will have to use your position and put it at the disposal of the struggle. Don’t make excuses that serve no purpose for us and that, in fact, are what gives wings to fascism so that it can grow.

Q: What are you going to do in this campaign?

A: We represent a very counterintuitive and very counter-hegemonic message: we believe that voting is not enough. Our message in the election campaign is to emphasize that popular power is the power that can win a conquest like the right to housing, and that is organized in the streets and in all the organizations that are now acquiring rank-and-file unionism. Go and vote, vote. I hope there aren’t fascists in our Congress, but the real work is to point out that we can twist the arm of the landlords as we twist it and we can reach the conquest of the right to housing the way the right to an eight-hour working day was conquered.