Election Fever

As we saw from the voting on Friday, a small party (with an even smaller shelf-life) managed to put the kybosh on the housing, renting and eviction proposals from the Government of Pedro Sánchez. The three groups who voted against were the Partido Popular, the far-right Vox and the seven-member-strong Junts per Catalunya (the ones who insist on speaking in Catalán in Parliament).

 Abascal, Sánchez and Feijóo

So, it looks like Pedro Sánchez has decided that he has had enough (we'll know for sure this weekend), and we will likely have general elections on November 29th.

He will be encouraged by the demonstrations and sit-ins in favour of the housing proposals – where, as El País reports, even 55% of PP and 54% of Vox supporters agree with the measures.

The Vox program, by the way, calls to prioritize nationals (that's to say, Spaniards born and bred) in access to any public aid and subsidized housing. Their ‘National Priority’ (a form of Jim Crow proposals) would only divide the country.

There are two types of foreigners in Spain – those who work in low-paying jobs and will be obliged to find the very cheapest – probably shared – accommodation, plus the far wealthier ones who are either professionals (dentists, doctors, businessmen) or who don’t work at all: being either comfortably retired or simply very rich, living either in the smartest parts of Marbella, Madrid, San Sebastián or Palma de Mallorca – in either case, with income from abroad.

Remember though, none of them, the poorest or the well-healed, can vote.

When the elections come, the choice will be some more Sánchez, or an alliance of Feijóo with Santiago Abascal. The Sánchez we know, along with his socialist allies and programs, will likely triumph with a parliamentary majority – not in small measure thanks to the public reaction to Friday’s vote in Las Cortes.

The alternative would be the Partido Popular, cemented together with Vox by necessity to reach a majority. While the PP has moved to the right in the last year or so, in the hope of staunching deserters moving to Vox, Abascal’s party (currently with maybe 18% of the vote) would be a necessary pillar to make Feijóo president.

Constant obligation to Vox would be a case of the tail wagging the dog.

In short, Vox’s price for this favour would be a high one – and they know that Feijóo would once again agree (as the PP has already done in the Aragón, Andalucía, Castilla y León and Extremadura regions).

Tax-cuts for the wealthy, deportations and more bullfights (we say with snark).

There is the question of party corruption – where no one is entirely clean. The traditional ‘y tú tambien’ (what about your guys!).

As we know, the judiciary appear to be rather stricter with the lefties than with the conservatives.

While Pedro Sánchez speaks good English (useful for international meetings) neither Feijóo nor Abascal do. That may not matter much in Madrid, but it does in Brussels and Washington.

But in the end, the choice is down to the voters (and we mustn’t forget our friends the Russian bots). Which way the people decide will make a huge difference to the future of Spain.

There's Nowhere Like Home

In Spain, "Una familia, una casa" has become a prominent political slogan and debate topic spearheaded by left-wing politicians, most notably Gabriel Rufián. The thrust, backed (more or less) by the Spanish Constitution, is that every family should have a home. This, many would argue, should come before profit, especially in the guise of the ‘Vulture Funds’ – who tend to buy entire blocks of apartments in their endless search for a buck.

The Vulture Funds (often but not always foreign hedge-funds like Morgan Stanley) may aim to increase rental-prices or add some slap-dash repairs and seek fresh tenants. They might plan to remove their existing tenants (known in the trade as ‘las cucarachas’) or perhaps leave the building entirely empty waiting for higher property values or maybe turn the apartments into short-term tourist lets or even a hotel. Who knows, and perish the thought, these scavengers might even enlist the help of a city councillor to expedite matters.

Circling just behind these birdies – who are just as happy investing in houses as in anything else with good opportunities – we have los grandes tenedores – landlords that own either ten or more homes or over 1,500m constructed. It can be a great business, especially if you divide the apartments into various rooms-for-rent, demand being what it is.

Then there’re the banks, whose mortgages sometimes turn out to be a little too rich. 

So Maricarmen. Article 47 of the Spanish Constitution establishes that all Spaniards have the right to enjoy decent and adequate housing, ‘though it is categorized as a guiding principle of social and economic policy rather than an absolute fundamental right’ (says Google AI properly), but housing isn’t just in the hands of the state, but rather under the control of the regional (and city) governments. As The Guardian notes: ‘Spain’s highly decentralised system, with power divided at a local, regional and national level, is once again the perfect cover for politicians to do the minimum and blame each other while individuals suffer’.

Maricarmen Abascal was a victim of this mess. She had been living in the same apartment since Franco’s times (when prices were cheap, there were firm rent-controls and not everyone dreamt of being a capitalista). Her parents moved in along with Maricarmen back in 1957 and until recently (as the only survivor) she was paying 500€ a month. A Spanish investment company bought the whole building a few years ago and suggested that she should be paying a more reasonable rent – like 2,650€ a month. Long story short, the 85-year-old was evicted last week and carted off to hospital. Serves her right, eh?

A friend visits Tent City

Not everyone would agree, and there have been protests – a sit-in began in Madrid’s Puerta del Sol on Saturday which soon turned itself into a tent-city.

Not that she was the only one – evictions in Spain (whether vulture-related, foreclosures, rent-in-arears or squatters) are numerous. Indeed, says Público, there’s an average of 44 evictions taking place daily in Spain. Not that you’ll see any flag-wavers or right-wing banners amongst the protestors.

The story has gone worldwide. ‘The dramatic eviction of Maricarmen has put Spain’s worsening housing crisis back in focus, amid rising rents, limited affordable homes and a political fight over tenant protections’, says an Asian source.

The Government had tried to resolve this issue back in April this year but were shorted by the contrary votes of… well, the usual suspects. It’s now trying once again.

Meanwhile, Urbagestión, the investment fund that evicted Maricarmen, feeling hurt by the negative press, on Monday relented and said she could have her old place back again.

Building more homes is all very well, and very necessary, but with the law of the jungle, where the new homes are picked up by the wealthy for speculative purposes, more attention needs to be placed on building rent-controlled council-homes, an expense which has fallen by 43% since 2002.

An item in Marca notes that Canada, faced with a similar issue, found the solution by stopping foreign venture-capital from entering the residential housing market.

Spain’s minority government has now proposed (once again) rent-controls, a halt on all evictions until 2030, and banning the purchase of housing by investment firms.

The Ceuta Issue Needs to be Resolved

There’s not really a lot of point to Ceuta and Melilla, Spain’s two inhabited territories in North Africa: fine places as they no doubt must be. Ceuta is small at just 18.5km² and one can walk from one end of Melilla to the other in an hour of so (4kms long, 3kms wide).

Neither of them charge IVA, and furthermore, residents and businesses enjoy massive tax cuts, including a 60% reduction in personal income tax (IRPF) and major corporate tax reliefs. This represents hundreds of millions in tax revenue that Spain willingly forgives every year to keep the cities economically viable.

…and they don’t really produce anything at all, except occasional trouble.

But there are around 170,000 people living in the two enclaves, which have both been Spanish possessions for the last 530 years (Melilla) and 360 years (Ceuta). As Pedro Sánchez says, they are both españolísimo.

Although, for practical reasons, Spain is stuck with two difficult stepchildren that are both a huge financial and political burden.

The total combined economic burden to Spain of Ceuta and Melilla, says Google AI, for the 2025 financial period, including structural maintenance, military operations, and foregone tax revenue, is estimated to be between €1,100 million and €1,500 million. This year, with extra protection, subsidies and defence investment, it will be more.

We remember the virulent reaction of Spain in 2002 to the brief occupation of the deserted Spanish island of Perejil, just 250 metres off the Moroccan coast. Then, and on the other hand, and casting back to a couple of weeks before Franco’s death in 1975, there was King Hassan II’s ‘Green March’ which took the more or less uncontested control of the Spanish Sahara (with Washington’s tacit approval).

In politics, we have the Moroccans claiming the two enclaves (known to them as Sebta and Mellila) for their own. As happened in the last days of July, this claim can sometimes prove to be a major problem, exacerbated (or maybe encouraged) by Donald Trump, Benjamin Netanyahu plus the usual suspects – Feijóo, Abascal and various nazi troublemakers.

Not that the Partido Popular or Vox want to lose the two cities – far from it. But there are political advantages to them both to go in with guns blazing. There were major protests outside every (PP/Vox) town hall in Spain last Wednesday (September 2) against the Government’s admittedly poor handling of the crisis, under the banner of the Federation of Municipalities and Provinces (FEMP), a right-leaning agency. I was in Granada that day and saw a large number of demonstrators heading towards the Plaza del Carmen, the town hall square, with many people wearing Spanish flags wrapped around their shoulders.

Indeed, the Ceuta ‘invasion’ (if I may quote Vox) has proven to be the biggest headache for Pedro Sánchez in this entire, complicated legislature.

The Moroccans are backing down for the moment, having caused a huge problem – they don’t particularly want a right-wing government in Spain, and Sánchez is firmly not blaming them for the 72,000 that crossed the border on July 31st (no doubt for sound political reasons), yet the fresh threat of Felipe VI visiting Ceuta and Melilla in the coming weeks is certainly not going to be at all acceptable to King Mohammad VI’s government.

So, what is to be done with the 5,000 migrants currently causing problems in Ceuta? Some are Moroccan, some are minors and some are Sub-Saharans. In theory, the Moroccans should be processed before being allowed to stay or to be returned; the 1,200 minors, known dismissively as los menas, should be allowed to stay and sent to refuges on the mainland (although the regional authorities run by the PP don’t want them); while the Sub-Saharans can’t be returned from one foreign country to another foreign country (!), so must be checked before being allowed to stay or to be returned to their homeland. This would be following Spanish and EU law.

The Spanish Supreme Court must come in for some blame over these events, as it ruled in July this year that those crossing a frontier may be returned ‘en caliente’, but those arriving by sea must be processed. A decision that would have been seen among the Moroccan youth as little short of an invitation.

It’s no doubt a lot easier to resolve the problem of 5,000 anxious migrants killing time in Ceuta than the alternative preferred by the Moroccans on the other side of the wall: to remove 170,000 irate Spanish residents to the Peninsular.

The Brief Invasion of Ceuta

All a bit odd – on Thursday morning a large number of apparently young men crossed the bay into Ceuta from Morocco. Bussed to their departure point by the gendarmerie and with the Moroccan border guards all away from their posts. They swam or crossed the rocky boundary into the Spanish enclave and – while there was no chance of them making their way to the Spanish mainland (or to the United Kingdom as faragistas would have us believe) – they milled around in the autonomous city until they had mostly returned, hungry, to Morocco by Saturday morning.

In all, some fifty to sixty thousand of them – creating a stink that could be heard around the world.

Around 67 are reported to have drowned in the exercise (and I wonder who lost sleep over that particular tragedy?), and it was noticeable that none of them brought so much as a change of clothes.

Why did this suddenly occur?

Could Spain’s recent deal with Algeria to import more gas have been the spark (excuse the pun)? Morocco and Algeria are historic enemies.

And what about Netanyahu’s son working to raise the Moroccans against the Spanish enclaves of Melilla and Ceuta? 

Or perhaps Donald Trump, annoyed with Pedro Sánchez, along with Benjamin Netanyahu – both firm allies of Mohammed VI – could have hatched a plot.

The ‘invasion’ played into the hands of the Spanish right-wing: Feijóo and Abascal both.

As long as events of this type are considered as ‘grey’, deniable and unfortunate, then they will continue – and who is to say that Melilla and Ceuta (and their 170,000 Spanish inhabitants) aren’t a justifiable target?

But now it’s over (except for a certain excitement led by the Italians), and the Spanish media can turn to other subjects; like forest fires, August holidays and Ayuso’s roof apartments scandal.