Costa: "I hope and wish that Pedro Sánchez calls elections"

PalmaThe first vice president of the Government, Antoni Costa, assessed this Friday the possibility of an early election in Madrid if the royal housing decrees fail in Congress. "I hope and wish that Pedro Sánchez calls them, not because we are asking for it today, but rather because they should have been called a long time ago," he stated in a press conference following the Government Council. However, he rejected that this would imply an early election in the Balearic Islands.

"The president will make the decisions that are convenient, and in no case do I believe they involve thinking about an electoral call in the short term," assured the vice president. In the same vein, he has again loaded heavily against the royal decrees on housing, which he said he hopes will lapse. "We follow with great concern the possibility that they are approved," he insisted, and highlighted that "they fall on the backs of small property owners" and would mean "a reduction in supply".

"There are small property owners who are withdrawing their housing from the rental market," continued Costa: "Fear, uncertainty, the insecurity of these decrees has caused it". In the same vein, he has loaded against the indefinite extension of rental contracts provided for in the second royal decree that is being debated today in Congress. "Mr. Sánchez has shown his true colors, and all Spaniards have seen what he is capable of doing," he continued: "He is capable of expropriating the use of a home from a small property owner, because making a perpetual rental contract is nothing else".

Warns that the Government will go to the Constitutional Court

In the same vein, he warned that, if they are finally approved, the Government will challenge them at the Constitutional Court (TC). "If they pass the Congress filter, I can announce that they will be analyzed in detail by the legal services, and if we find the slightest option to take them to the TC we will spare no effort," he continued: "It is our responsibility to try to stop the harm they can cause." Thus, he criticized that they incorporate measures that "impute responsibility to the communities," such as debt compensation to avoid evictions of vulnerable families. "Where has this been seen? Let Sánchez pay, as he is the one who made the decree," he retorted, and accused the Spanish government of carrying out an "encroachment on powers".