For the PP, everyone wants to expropriate. Land and houses. The argument is constant in this party since the socialist government of Emiliano García-Page announced the draft Family Farming Law, already approved. And it became stronger when Podemos announced its policies to promote affordable housing in the autonomous community. In both cases he has not stopped repeating it and even more so when the electoral campaign for 28M approaches: the socialists want to take land from the people and the purple formation wants to do the same with the houses. But is this really so?
The Government approves the Family Farming Law that is committed to sustainability and the fight against depopulation
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Both the PP candidate for the Presidency of the Junta, Francisco Núñez, and his number two in the party, Carolina Agudo, and all the provincial and local candidates, have clung to the “expropriation of land” which, according to what they affirm, contemplated in the new agrarian regulations. In fact, in the party they consider that this new law is “subject to the dictatorship” of Emiliano García-Page and his “podemita” policy and that, therefore, if they govern, they will repeal this law.
The new Law on Family Farming and Access to Land in Castilla-La Mancha was approved in the regional courts at the end of March with the PP and Ciudadanos voting against it, who called for its withdrawal. It is a new text whose objective is entrepreneurship in the countryside through small and medium-sized farms, against the “uberization” model, that of multinationals and investment funds that the regional government has been rejecting in the last two legislatures.
The text defines two important figures such as agrarian protection zones and land banks, agreed with professional organizations to make soils that are currently not productive.
What it says about expropriation is found in the part that regulates the transfer of use of “underused” agricultural land to the new Banco de Tierras Disponibles de Castilla-La Mancha. In this case, it establishes that the Ministry of Agriculture “may agree with respect to a plot or rustic farm the declaration of non-compliance with the social function of the use of the land, due to its underutilization”. And it also adds that this social function will be considered breached if that plot or rustic farm has remained in the inventory of underused land for two consecutive years. That is, it may belong to someone, but it is no longer used.
This is not an expropriation law and it does not speak at any time of seizing anything
To say, therefore, that the regional government wants to expropriate is “to tell a lot of lies, a lot of tension and a lot of hoax, which is more dangerous.” “This is not an expropriatory law and it does not speak at any time of seizing anything,” defends the socialist deputy Joaquina Saiz.
The most significant thing is not only the nuance (that forced expropriation would occur in certain very specific cases) but also that it is collected in the same way in the Agrarian Law of Castilla y León, where the PP governs together with Vox. In this case there is the same heading – article 86 – on the assignment of use, where the Ministry can also agree that a piece of land is underused.
In the Castilian-Leon case, the figure on the transfer of use has another name -Fondo de Tierras Disponibles-, but the rest of the wording of the law is practically the same: if the social function of the use of the land is considered unfulfilled, there will be a “expropriation file”, that is, the beginning of the procedures for the deprivation of use. And that is, as in the case of Castilla-La Mancha, if it has remained underutilized for two consecutive years.
The question is obligatory: if the PP considers that this law is “worthy of the most recalcitrant communists and podemites” and Page does politics “as the communist dictator Hugo Chávez did with the Spanish agricultural companies”, is he also a chavista and a podemita? the Government of Castilla y León? This is an argument that the Castilian-La Mancha socialists have used not only to defend their new law but also to make the PP “stop repeating so many lies.”
But the opposition party, far from giving up, has added a new “expropriation danger” to the arguments it uses to get votes: according to what it says, Podemos also wants to expropriate, but in its case, they are houses. This last accusation is more convoluted because it mixes a new proposal of the purple formation in Castilla-La Mancha with the recently approved state Housing Law. In neither case are homes expropriated.
Specifically, Unidas Podemos has presented an urgent measure for Castilla-La Mancha that seeks to “guarantee” a rent starting at 50 euros for families and young people in the region. This measure would reach some 581,000 people between the ages of 15 and 39 and 45% of the households in the autonomous community. The measure would be carried out through a “public real estate agency” that would offer the entire existing public housing stock. The rents would go from 50 euros to 200 euros per month, and would vary depending on income.
A protocol that is not an expropriation
As at the state level, neither Podemos nor Izquierda Unida want to expropriate. Nor does the new Housing Law contemplate this, which includes a mediation procedure in cases of eviction from habitual residences of occupants in a situation of economic vulnerability and only in properties of large holders. In other words, it establishes a protocol for action in cases of irregular occupation of homes that does not imply the expropriation policy of which the PP speaks.
The regulations that regulate expropriation in Spain date from 1954. It was drafted during the Franco dictatorship. It is one of the few that have not been renewed since the 1978 Constitution, despite the fact that it is a transversal regulation that affects many others.
It establishes that the object of the expropriation can be private property and legitimate patrimonial rights or interests, but “personal or family rights cannot be expropriated, nor public or public property.”
