Spain's parliament betrays tenants to protect vulture funds
By Maya Ellison · Reporting from Detroit ·
After lawmakers sank emergency housing decrees following a brutal eviction in Madrid, tenants must organize a general strike to defeat the predatory financial elite.
When a stretcher on the curb is just the cost of doing business
An 87-year-old disabled woman named Maricarmen Abascal was carried out of her central Madrid home on a stretcher. The investment firm Urbagestión turned her out onto the pavement because she could not pay a crushing 230 percent rent increase. She had lived in that flat for 70 years. That stretch of asphalt in Madrid is where the abstract ledgers of global capital finally collide with human breath and bone. It is the exact same intersection my generation knows too well. Every square foot of earth is treated as a casino chip while working people are treated as collateral damage. The eviction of Maricarmen Abascal did not happen in a vacuum. It was the logical output of a system that commodifies the roof over your head. Urbagestión offered to let her return on a low rent after the public uproar caught fire. But the match had already hit the gas. Spain was burning.
The right-wing coalition and regional brokers choose the oligarchy over the people
Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez brought emergency housing decrees to the Congress of Deputies. He begged lawmakers to inject a shred of humanity into the market, according to reporting by theguardian.com. The decrees proposed to suspend evictions of vulnerable tenants and extend rental leases. They also aimed to hike taxes on tourist apartments, restrict vulture funds, and automatically renew rental contracts. They were modest, defensive measures to stop the bleeding. But the conservative People's Party, the far-right Vox, and Together for Catalonia united to sink them, as reported by the BBC. The right cheered from the floor. Social Affairs Minister Pablo Bustinduy of the Sumar alliance framed the stakes in the pages of NBC News. He said the vote was about "defending an international oligarchy which is extracting the rent from salaries earned with the effort of working classes of this country in order to share it out with dividends and they don't even pay taxes in Spain."
The foreclosure crisis taught us who the banks serve when they write the rules
This parliamentary betrayal is a carbon copy of the Foreclosure Crisis. Financial institutions weaponized housing as a speculative asset, displacing the vulnerable to maximize dividends for an international oligarchy. In 2010, American banks treated mortgages as toxic waste and threw families onto the snowbanks. Now, the European real estate complex treats city blocks as yield curves. When Juan Bravo of the People's Party argued that housing does not get cheaper with decrees, he was parroting free-market fairy tales. He ignored the fact that vulture funds do not build affordable housing. They buy up shelter to extract maximum extraction from minimum wages. Outside Congress, protesters chanted "shame on you" and "your profits, our misery." They echoed the spirit of Occupy Wall Street as they built a sprawling tent city in Puerta del Sol, according to theguardian.com. As Free Malaysia Today notes, the Confederation of Tenants' Unions has answered this legislative stonewalling by calling for a general strike. You cannot negotiate with a predator that views your grandmother's living room as a quarterly return. And you cannot vote your way out of an oligarchy using the tools the oligarchy bought and paid for.
The street remains the only leverage left when parliament locks its doors
History tells us that when mainstream politics becomes a locked vault guarded by speculators, the people take the fight to the pavement. They build parallel power through tenants' unions and general strikes. They will fight until the cost of maintaining the status quo is higher than the cost of changing it. The political parties that sank these decrees have declared war on the social majority. These parties include Vox, the PP, and the myopic regional brokers in Together for Catalonia. They will own every eviction notice that lands on a kitchen table from here on out. Maricarmen Abascal deserved to live out her days in peace. She should not have needed a national uprising to secure her front door. Every tenant in Madrid deserves a home that cannot be financialized away by a remote fund in a tax haven. The lawmakers who voted down these protections have chosen their side. It is time for the working class of Spain to show them the unyielding, disruptive power of a general strike. They must shut this rigged economy down until shelter is recognized as a human right.
Sources
- BBC: Spanish PM Sánchez loses key housing crisis vote after eviction of woman, 87
- BBC: Spanish PM Sánchez loses key housing crisis vote after eviction of woman, 87
- NBC News: Spain proposes ban on evictions as ousted 87-year-old accepts offer to return home
- theguardian.com: Spanish right wing votes down housing crisis plans as protest movement grows
- Free Malaysia Today: Spain’s government dealt blow as lawmakers reject housing bills