Not to build even one more square meter

The housing crisis has become the main course on the political menu and, in part, it is good that it is so, because housing policies are also environmental policies and cultural policies, and, ultimately, they point directly to the usual question, which is none other than that of the economic model. We insist on the fact that it is also not negative that a particular case, that of the eviction of Maricarmen, has caused massive public outrage that has translated into civic mobilizations and political pressure that has even forced the government of Spain to improvise (or attempt to improvise) legislation in the form of an anti-eviction and anti-speculation decree. The attention that Maricarmen's case has received does not in any way imply a lack of attention to the thousands of people who also suffer the injustice of losing the place where they live, or of not being able to access housing, due to a market out of control. On the contrary, it includes and represents them.

The momentum that the housing debate has gained has forced politicians to take a stand. This also applies to the leaders of the Balearic Islands, who remain unmoved in their creed: to combat housing problems, lower taxes, build everywhere, and make it as easy as possible. In short, the entire legislative construct that Marga Prohens' Government has carried forward in these three-plus years of the legislature: administrative simplification and almost complete lack of protection for the territory. Naturally, the fact that among the sponsors of the two far-right parties that are in government, the PP and Vox, and among their own executive leaderships, builders and real estate entrepreneurs abound, has nothing to do with this eagerness to build a lot and faster than ever.

Deregulating and building without measure, far from providing a solution to the crisis or, at the very least, alleviating it in some aspect, will do nothing but exacerbate it exponentially. It would be something comparable to acknowledging that in the Balearic Islands there is a problem of touristification and massification (directly related, by the way, to the housing problem) and pretending to “combat it” by bringing in a million more tourists every year, and expanding the airport so that many more can come (it is a supposition, because no minimally responsible government would be capable of doing that). It would be, I don't know, like announcing that there is a public safety problem and addressing it by decorating two convicted police officers, one for torture against a detainee and another for homophobic harassment against a colleague: it is what the Palma City Council has done, as we have learned thanks to a report by Kiko Mestre in Diario de Mallorca.

Let us return, however, to the housing crisis, which has become an emergency of international scope. Some countries in Europe are further ahead than others: in communist and Bolivarian France, for example, they have implemented the climate and resilience law, which sets as its goal Net Zero Artificialization (ZAN). This means: regenerating and rehabilitating spaces already built, recycling neighborhoods, not building even one more square meter in rustic areas or on the periphery of cities, but rather working on the existing housing stock. And above all, following the maxim coined by architects Anne Lacaton and Jean-Philippe Vasal: ‘Ne jamais démolir’, never demolish. Repurpose, recycle, build again upon what is already built. Take care of nature, take care of people, punish the speculators. This is the future.