Proletarians

It is quite normal for young people to be very angry because of the housing problem. If there is one thing that marks the step towards adulthood, it is the possibility of becoming independent, of fleeing the parents' house and finally being able to lead a life of one's own. When this possibility is frustrated, it can only increase disillusionment, and even rage, as is being seen these days in many capitals with encampments protesting both against speculation and the evictions of vulnerable people.

With housing, it has not been possible to achieve the same as with other goods or services: to remove it from the market and speculation to truly make it an enforceable constitutional right, beyond that rhetoric that obliges public authorities to pay lip service to it. In Spain, construction has always been one of the pillars of the economy, especially because of Francoism, which based a large part of the model on the push for construction, mainly to provide housing in the capital for the peasant masses that had fled from the provinces. Masses formed by that low-skilled labor force that abounded everywhere, and that had to find work in something.

The system, moreover, incentivized credit, tax benefits, and land was placed at the disposal of growth: the decision to turn a plot of land into building land generated enormous private capital gains (from which certain families have continued to live for three or four generations now). The administration urbanizes and changes the law, but it is the private land that multiplies its value. Land piracy has been one of the foundations of this country's economy, and from this now derive many of the ills that plague us.

The democratic housing model has continued with the Francoist policy of making a country of owners who embrace the privilege of asset accumulation. There were 'owners', in Spain, not 'proletarians', as one of Franco's ministers said, always looking to deactivate any shred of communist temptation. Often, what conservative people have done is fuel this fear of losing property.

In many countries, public housing returns to being public after a few years of private use. Here, this had never been done; in fact, houses have become large family piggy banks: the treasure that one day or another could be received. The problem right now is perpetuating this false solution and building again, publicly or privately, so that a whole other generation can access ownership. Public housing and social rents should be created, but everyone has more or less become accustomed to the Francoist mentality and wants to own an apartment, which is tempting if the mortgage and the rent (social or not) are more or less the same amount. Any policy that radically cheapens housing contradicts the wealth interests of those who already have it. This vicious circle seems difficult to break.

The 2008 crisis stopped everything, and young people have no longer been able to become new owners, and now they truly are proletarians, children and grandchildren of a property system that made the old rich so that now the young sleep in the squares.