Open war between the PP and the PSIB over housing with the elections on the horizon

PalmaThe first plenary session after the calling of the general elections has turned into an open war between the right-wing bench and the left-wing bench over housing. The PSIB has signed up to Pedro Sánchez's plans, who has started the pre-campaign by approving 21 housing measures, and has brought a bill to request that the Islands be declared a stressed area and to force a pronouncement from the PP and Vox. But, furthermore, it has invited both socialist mayors and Pilar López, an evicted woman, and union representatives to Parliament to put pressure on the Government.

Already during the control session, Prohens anticipated that she would reject the proposal. For three years, her Government has refused to apply this prerogative of the state law, which would allow for the limitation of rental prices. According to data from the IBAVI delivered to the PSIB following a parliamentary question, rental prices have indeed increased by around 70% between 2022 and 2025. Not only that, but the number of rental contracts has also fallen by 20%.

Prohens has claimed that the state law "exacerbates the problem" of access to housing and that price capping is a "failed" measure, because it constricts the available supply. In response to a question from the Menorcanist Josep Castells, who insisted that housing today "is more unaffordable than ever," she accused him of having an "inferiority complex" regarding Catalonia, which does apply the rent cap. "What have the Balearic people done to you for you to wish them the evil that they suffer in Catalonia?", she snapped. In the same vein, she attacked MÉS per Mallorca for acting as an "altar boy" for the PSOE in Madrid, for having "applauded" the Spanish government's housing decrees.

The president has insisted on the PP Government's recipe regarding housing: favoring the construction and promotion of 10,000 affordable homes, which are still in the initial stages of preparation—that is, they have not yet been built—in the face of the lack of supply, the protection of small property owners, and the demand for a law against squatting. In the same vein, the first vice president and minister of Economy, Antoni Costa, has criticized the Spanish government for having taken advantage of the dissolution of the Cortes to validate housing decrees that were rejected in Congress through the Permanent Deputation, a body where the progressives have a majority without Junts. Costa has considered it an "unprecedented" event and a "fraud against democracy never seen before."

Vox spokesperson, Manuela Cañadas, has also spoken out against the law. The deputy has once again lashed out at immigrants, whom she has blamed for the housing crisis. "There are estimates that place the cost at more than 13 billion euros," she asserted: "How many homes, public developments, could be built with 13 billion?"

All in all, the PSIB has achieved its objective, faithful to the path traced by Moncloa: for housing to be the framework of the debate. The socialists will try to extend this issue until the elections, in which they will contrast Pedro Sánchez's model with a right wing that refuses to approve price caps and strengthen protection for tenants. "The PP is always in favor of evicting vulnerable people," said PSIB spokesperson, Iago Negueruela, who demanded that the populars "recover that Christian humanism they once had." "The housing problem is ethical and moral, and you do not want to face it, because you are always in agreement with vulture funds," he retorted, and accused the Government of "failing" with its housing policies, in accordance with the constant increase in prices.

The spokesperson for MÉS per Mallorca, Lluís Apesteguia, has demanded that the Government allow left-wing municipalities to declare their towns as stressed areas in order to limit prices there. "What the declaration of stressed areas says is that where speculators do not allow workers to access housing, the Administration will intervene," he said. In the same vein, Castells has attacked the arguments of the right, mainly the idea that price limitation affects small property owners. "It does not affect them, but rather companies that have large real estate assets," he remarked.

MÉS per Mallorca has also recovered its law against real estate speculation in recent weeks to bring it to Parliament. However, the eco-sovereignists have been forced to debate sooner than they thought whether they will run again in the elections hand in hand with the Sumar space and the state left. For now, they have limited themselves to saying that they will go to the polls in a "Balearic key", while Esquerra Unida has proposed a joint candidacy in the Islands with Ara Més (the federation of MÉS per Mallorca, Més per Menorca and Ara Eivissa), Podemos and Sumar.