Tens of thousands protest housing crisis, as Spain calls early election

A rally over the cost of housing has turned into a violent protest on Spanish streets after masked demonstrators turned on police and set fire to cars and rubbish bins, one day after Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez called a snap election amid widening social unrest.

Protesters confronted police and lit fires in central Barcelona after 20,000 people gathered for a largely peaceful demonstration over the cost of housing, seen as a dominant issue for the November 29 parliamentary election.

Sanchez called the election on Sunday after the parliament rejected his proposed housing reforms – including rent caps – in the wake of large protests on housing when a landlord evicted an 87-year-old woman from her home.

The violence in Barcelona on Monday highlighted the power of the protest movement after weeks of rallies and a stalemate in parliament over how to tackle housing shortages and rising rents.

While the protest organisers claimed 120,000 attended the gathering in Barcelona on Monday, the Guardia Urbana police estimated the crowd at about 20,000. The police said 30 officers were injured and 13 people were arrested.

The violence erupted after many of the peaceful protestors had dispersed and activists stepped up their actions near the main thoroughfare in Barcelona, the Passeig de Gracia. News photographers on the scene witnessed some protestors waving banners for the POUM, the Workers Party of Marxist Unification, a party that traces its history to the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s.

The city’s tenants union, Sindicat de Llogateres, organised the rally to call for a general strike over housing to force action by governments to reduce costs.

Sanchez called the election with a promise to act on affordable housing, public services, and social rights.

“Spain must continue advancing, and for that, we need citizens to bolster our strength in parliament,” he said.

“It’s time to mobilise. It’s time to fight. On November 29, we’re going to make history. Again.”

Sanchez, the leader of the Spanish Socialist Workers Party, has ruled since 2018 and won several elections despite predictions of his defeat because of the rise of parties on the right.

At the coming election, however, he begins the campaign lagging behind the People’s Party and its leader, Alberto Nunez Feijoo.

The Sanchez government’s housing plans were rejected in parliament last Friday when opponents from the right blocked changes including rent caps and limits on purchasing real estate for corporations.

Feijoo and the People’s Party are promising an alternative plan that includes building 250,000 new homes a year and claiming this would help create 600,000 jobs.

“If Spaniards give me their trust, my priority, my success, will be housing policy,” said Feijoo on Sunday.

The People’s Party has about 33 per cent support and the Socialists have around 26 per cent support in recent polls.

The Sanchez government is planning to go ahead with the housing policy changes despite the parliamentary setback, with moves on Tuesday in Madrid – late on Tuesday, AEST – to put them into force.

Culture Minister Ernest Urtasun said the decrees on housing would be sent for approval by a reduced body of caretaker legislators who remain in place after parliament was dissolved for the election.

The ⁠standing body of 69 members, when including lower ​house speaker Francina Armengol from Sanchez’s Socialist Party, has a ​slim majority in favour of the measures.

The housing decrees would ​be implemented temporarily until a new parliament is formed, broadcaster TVE reported.

The trigger for the unrest was the attempted eviction of 87-year-old ​Maricarmen Abascal in central Madrid last month after her building was bought by a real estate firm, setting off the concerns about corporate ownership.

Her case triggered nationwide protests and catapulted the issue ‌to the top of the agenda, even overshadowing immigration, which had dominated headlines for weeks following a mass migrant crossing in Ceuta.

With Reuters

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