Propaganda without squatters
To no one's surprise, Palma's anti-employment office has received only half a dozen inquiries since its opening. The experience of Castile and León (where the PP and Vox govern) should have alerted the mayor of Palma to avoid this embarrassing situation, created solely to appease their far-right partners. The PP caved and arrived—as is their wont—at a compromise: renaming the existing office with the word 'anti-employment' so that Vox could promote its message.
Abascal's party is characterized by its disregard for jurisdictional frameworks, prioritizing its ideological proposals with no practical application. Paradoxically, they do so while demanding the dismantling of entire government institutions. Perhaps that's why they haven't hesitated to advise those whose homes are occupied with a guide recommending they hire a lawyer, report the situation to the police, and install an alarm system. For all these reasons, there was no need to go so far.
The office's figures speak for themselves: the majority of users come seeking help for rental-related problems. To resolve these issues, they could start by declaring the city a high-stress zone or demanding more resources from the City Council to combat illegal tourist rentals. The real tragedy lies with all those whom greedy landlords want to double the rent to renew their contracts, or those evicted by the runaway market, struggling to find at least a room for what it cost to rent an entire apartment just a few years ago.
Squatting is, of course, a tragedy, and the police and the courts have mechanisms to combat it. But it's not widespread (the data speaks for itself), and what little there is occurs in properties owned by vulture funds that, operating with secrecy and the complicity of banks and the financial system, evicted owners who had fallen on hard times.
Vox boasts of speaking the language of the people, of defending the interests of citizens, but its strength is based on disinformation and polarization. The dangerous thing is that the discourse is well-crafted to reach its intended audience and knows how to do so. Although it's always easier to convince with lies than with the truth. Employment isn't the problem. Nor is immigration. And certainly not in the simplistic terms (filled with false data) in which they present them. The alarm bells that should be ringing aren't those in our homes.
