The president of Vox, Santiago Abascal, defended this Monday the need to “regularize” vulture funds in order to prevent them from accumulating homes and fueling real estate speculation, although he avoided specifying what the threshold would be from which those limits would apply.
In an interview on “La Revuelta,” Abascal said that vulture funds seem “bad” to him and revealed that he himself “has been a victim” of price increases “when he was renting.” “It seems to me that a rise in the rent or in housing prices in a sudden way, regardless of the market and only with the aim of getting rich, seems bad to me,” he added during the conversation.
Asked by David Broncano, the leader of Vox showed himself to be in favor of “regulating” vulture funds “so that this kind of practice is not possible” and “so that the increase in the cost (of housing) has to do with the market and not to speculate and hold onto housing.” However, he did not offer details about how he would implement that regulation.
“I think the State has to intervene when there is an abusive practice in the market,” he acknowledged. “If that’s enough for you, I’m not going to tell you starting from how many,” he replied to Broncano when the latter tried to get him to specify the scope of his proposal.
In his analysis of the housing problem, Abascal argued that “the great speculation” comes “from the public sector and the Ministry of Finance placing taxes absolutely in everything related to housing.” In his view, the root of the price increase lies in migratory pressure and in the scarcity of new developments. The leader summarized that “supply and demand don’t match, it isn’t being built, and more and more people are coming in.”
Among the measures he proposed, he mentioned the suppression of taxes on the purchase of the first home, an increase in the construction of public housing, the liberalization of “all” land to build, avoiding it being “strictly protected” for environmental reasons, as well as the repatriation of immigrants who are in an irregular situation and of those, while being legal, who commit crimes or depend on public aid.
Morocco, Israel and Vox’s foreign policy
During the interview, Abascal also referred to the relationship with Morocco and reiterated that it is “impossible” to maintain good neighborhood relations with a country that, according to what he said, “drives” the arrival of “100,000 people” to Ceuta “as part of a hybrid war” while “three of its ministers” are demanding Ceuta and Melilla. “It’s extremely serious,” he emphasized.
The leader also addressed Vox’s alignment with Israel, one of the most tense stretches of the program. He explained that his contacts with Tel Aviv have been limited to three issues: the Hamas attacks of October 7; the request that the Israeli Parliament not recognize the independence of Catalonia; and support for Spain against Morocco’s claims over Ceuta and Melilla.
Broncano reproached him for not condemning “the terrifying genocide” of Palestine in those exchanges with his Israeli partners, which led to a back-and-forth of reproaches. Abascal said that he finds it “terrifying,” and the host replied that “he hasn’t had the balls to tell it” to the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
The Vox leader was upset by the comment, and Broncano ended up apologizing. Abascal responded: “Maybe you haven’t had the gall to point to the main person responsible, the one they should appeal to for those deaths, which is the terrorist organization Hamas, that uses people as human shields; that’s what I stand by.”
Civil War, historical memory, and the program format
Another block of the interview focused on the Civil War and the Law of Historical Memory. Abascal clarified that Vox “is not against” excavating mass graves to recover the disappeared and specified that “it’s the only thing” that can be salvaged from that legislation, which his party has repealed in the communities where it governs with the PP and has committed to eliminating at the state level if it comes to power. “It’s the only one; the rest, the only thing it seeks is a confrontation between us,” he opines.
Throughout the program, several moments of tension were experienced between the guest and the host. Broncano revealed that Abascal’s team had “some fear” that the regular audience of the show “would make the conversation difficult and break the rhythm of the interview,” so the politician’s team managed the attendance of viewers, who came from an agency.
True to the custom that guests on “La Revuelta” bring a gift to the host, Abascal arrived with a flag of Ceuta, a territory that has become one of the focal points of his campaign for the general elections on November 29. The Vox leader asked Broncano to keep the banner on the set until the autonomous city “recovers.”