The PP candidate for Congress for Barcelona and mayor of Badalona (Barcelona), Xavier García Albiol, and the head of the Junts list, Miriam Nogueras, have questioned the Government’s housing model in front of the Minister of Culture and number two of Comuns-Front Amplio for Congress for Barcelona, Ernest Urtasun, and have also shown their rejection of the model defended by the Front Amplio candidate and former mayor of Barcelona, Ada Colau.
The clash of positions took place in the debate held this Monday between the candidates for Barcelona in the general elections of November 29, organized by Pimec, and in which the ERC representative, Gabriel Rufián, did not finally attend. During the event, Albiol said that "whoever has a rental apartment is terrified".
The popular leader reproached the Government that with its measures it puts "the truly vulnerable and those who are not vulnerable on the same level", while the minister urged both Albiol and the rest of the debate participants to read in detail what the housing decree establishes.
"In the end, you can say one thing and the reality is another. From the moment these decrees were made public, the first initiative you had and now this second one approved by the Council of Ministers, more and more rental apartments are being taken off the market," the PP leader said, warning of a progressive reduction in supply.
Debate on protection for the landlord and profitability
Urtasun replied to Albiol that "you’ve forgotten that if a person is considered vulnerable, property owner of the apartment, who can be a pensioner or can be a worker or anyone, they receive money from the administration."
The minister defended that extending rental contracts to avoid price increases does not mean cutting the landlord’s profitability, but preventing it from rising, and argued that "if so many investments went into housing in recent years, it is because housing has been much more profitable than any investment fund."
For her part, Nogueras also questioned the degree of protection for small property owners and said: "I think that the person who hasn’t read the royal decree, Mr. Minister, is you, because it is evident that small property owners are not protected."
The Junts candidate, who has described the current housing situation as disastrous and has considered the results of the policies applied in the last decade to be bad, has warned that she will not allow Junts votes after the elections to serve so that Colau “is a minister in any case.”
The Minister of Industry and PSC candidate for Congress for Barcelona, Jordi Hereu, has come out in defense of the Government’s strategy on housing and has highlighted the resources transferred by the State to the autonomous communities to promote new construction.
State Pact on Housing and the Parties’ Positions
Asked about the advisability of pushing for a State pact on housing, only Hereu and Albiol have responded clearly that they consider this initiative necessary. In contrast, the Vox candidate, Juanjo Aizcorbe, has recalled that other State pacts have already been reached that were then not complied with.
“Everything about housing has to be changed radically. But of course, look what has happened, 6 million people have come from abroad who have the bad habit of wanting to live somewhere. And that has an impact,” the Vox representative added, who has argued for modifying the land law to allow building across the entire territory except in protected areas.
Infrastructure and Maintenance of the Rail Network
In the block devoted to infrastructure, the debate has focused especially on the railway. Hereu has argued that it has been a priority for the Executive because of the investments already made, while Urtasun has proposed speeding up the works “that are running late” and redirecting the funds intended to increase AVE speed toward the Rodalies network.
Albiol has also underscored the urgency of investing in maintenance of the rail network, proposing an injection of 20,000 million euros only in the first year of the next Government, and has described the current state of Rodalies as worrying.
Nogueras has reiterated her demand for a complete transfer of Rodalies, including tracks, trains, stations, and resources, and has demanded that the Ministry “pay,” criticizing that during the campaign large budget items are announced that, according to what he said, then end up getting stuck halfway.
Finally, Aizcorbe has attributed the situation of the rail network in Spain and, in particular, that of Rodalies in Catalonia, to the fact that the Ministry of Transport "has preferred corruption" and has accused the Executive of Pedro Sánchez of acting irresponsibly in this matter.