Vox, PP and now also the PSOE are fighting for the ‘antiokupa’ flag that only worries 1% of Spaniards

For the first time in its history, the public sociological body collected responses regarding the occupation of dwellings. In total, of the 3,713 people who effectively responded to the survey, one of the main ones carried out in Spain, only 37 spontaneously pointed it out as a problem, either general or that affects them.

All in all, they are more than the responses compiled by pollsters in previous barometers. That is why the CIS has decided to categorize it, as explained by the center itself.

The arrival of the matter to the body led by José Félix Tezanos coincides with the expansion of the political battle to champion this issue. Until now, it was an almost exclusive field of the right, especially the extreme right. Until now, Vox has been the party that has tried to convert the discourse anti-squatters in electoral revenue. Pablo Casado’s PP entered the dispute, but more as an attempt to stop the transfer of votes towards the formation of Santiago Abascal.

Now, that flight of voters has been reversed and it is Vox who sees how, poll after poll, their numbers dwindle while Alberto Núñez Feijóo’s get fatter. Perhaps to strengthen this trend, the leader of the PP has decided to bet on one of the recurring matters on the ultra agenda and that has achieved the most penetration among Vox voters, according to the CIS barometer itself, although in this case the cases must analyze them carefully because the sample (the 37 people who recognized the occupation as a problem) is very small. But perhaps that is also why the PP has chosen Catalonia, where the extreme right not only gave the first sorpasso to the right in the February 2021 elections, but tripled in representation.

Feijóo has scheduled a series of itinerant monographic conferences in which only the issues that interest them at all times will be addressed, and thus avoid a common ideological convention in which to pronounce on issues that, for whatever reason, they prefer to leave aside. And the first was held this Friday in Barcelona under the title “Stop squats. Measures against squatting”. The objective of the conference is, according to the Number Three of the party, Elías Bendodo, “access first-hand the concerns” of citizens to “transform them into common sense policies”.

A “concern” that, in the case of occupations and according to the CIS, only affects 1% of Spaniards. Despite this fact, Bendodo elaborated that “illegal occupation is a problem for thousands of families” that causes “homelessness and violation of rights.” And that is “especially in Catalonia, where the institutions irresponsibly act as a call for illegal occupation”. The general coordinator said that “21 housing occupations per day” occur in the community, a partial figure (which includes only the first four months of the year) and that does not take into account the type of housing affected or their owners.

“It is a very clear topical issue that is of increasing concern,” Bendodo pointed out to questions from journalists, after attacking the credibility of the CIS. “It’s a topic that is growing and increasing,” he added. And he concluded that the PP wants to give “a message of legal certainty” because “it seems that now if your house is occupied, nothing can be done.”

The “real problems” of the 1%

Despite this, Feijóo not only influenced these data during the premiere of the conference, but also changed them to make them more spectacular and, consequently, more unreal. The national president of the PP changed the word “occupation” for “usurpation”, two different concepts that Feijóo used as synonyms in an erroneous way since not all occupations are usurpations, a crime that requires that the house be considered a “dwelling”. And not just any apartment or house is.

In his speech in Barcelona, ​​Feijóo said that the itinerant route that the PP is going to take throughout Spain aims to talk about the “real problems of society.” Later, he also acknowledged that the series of conferences has an “electoral” spirit before the municipal and regional elections in May of next year.

“To speak of Catalonia is to speak of the illegal usurpation of the homes of the Catalans,” he said. And he offered the data handled by the PP to justify his position: “There are 49 daily usurpations of housing, it takes up to a year and a half to evict the squat. 43% of all illegal usurpations of housing occur in Catalonia”.

Feijóo took the opportunity to insist on the measures that the PP proposed last summer in a bill that the party leader said will be put to a vote before the end of the year, which will serve to portray the Government, whom he accused of using the housing shortage as a “smokescreen” that “has nothing to do” with the occupations.

The reference to the eviction period is not gratuitous and part of an affirmation that the judges have denied in recent times, precisely due to the increase in similar declarations. This same week, the dean of Cáceres assured in an interview in elDiario.es that “it doesn’t matter if 48 hours, 40 days or 200 go by, a squat can be fired immediately.”

PSOE: Limit of 48 hours

But the propaganda messages sometimes permeate much more than the legal reality. And the PSOE has jumped on the bandwagon of the fight against the occupation and has also entered the war by putting low limits on the time in which they commit to legislate to promote an eviction.

Evictions in 48 hours. Is he leitmotif of one of the amendments presented by the PSOE to the future housing law, previously emanated from a negotiation in the coalition government itself and whose approval should take place before the end of the year, according to the commitment of the minister of the branch, Raquel Sánchez.

The amendment threatens to blow up the agreement of the progressive majority on one of the laws that is proving to be the most difficult for the coalition Executive to pass and in whose initial negotiation two people who have not been part of the Council of Ministers participated for a long time: Pablo Iglesias and Jose Luis Abalos.

The reform text of the bill is an amendment not only to the document issued by the coalition government, but also to the previous positions of the PSOE in Congress. In October 2020, an initiative agreed by the PP, Vox and Ciudadanos was voted in plenary that urged the Executive to “design legislative mechanisms” to speed up evictions in cases of “illegitimate occupation or usurpation.” The majority of the Chamber, including the socialist group, defeated the proposal. A year later, in September 2021, the Socialists also voted against the “anti-squatting law” promoted by the then leader of the PP, Pablo Casado, and which, among other things, proposed “evicting squatters within a maximum period of 48 hours”, just what the PSOE is now trying to carry out.

PP cheat motion

In the PP they want to influence this crack in the progressive majority that makes up the Government and that supports it in parliament. And see if the PSOE is serious with its proposal on occupations.

When the processing of the entire General Budgets is completed at the beginning of November, the group led by Cuca Gamarra will vote on a motion that includes some of the approaches that the Socialists have taken to their motion.

The statement of reasons for the motion accuses the “Government of Pedro Sánchez” of “passivity” and “complicity”, among other phrases that the PSOE can hardly assume. But what is voted on in Congress is not the expository part, but the one that is expressly addressed to the Executive to order him to make a decision.

And there the PP does see an option to gain political advantage. Either the PSOE assumes some points and breaks the voting unit with United We Can and other partners, or rejects them, which will allow the right to attack the socialists.

Because if someone has been in this war for a long time, it is Vox and Ciudadanos. The appearance of a spokesperson for the ultra party in which they do not bring up a new case, real or invented, is rare. Vox echoed the hoax of an old woman who, after spending time in the hospital, supposedly found on her return that the employee who took care of her had appropriated her home.

A lie propagated by the Desokupa company, of which Santiago Abascal’s party has proselytized and which has been hired a few days ago by the Catalan municipality of Premià de Dalt, where Junts and the PSC govern in coalition. The mayor (Junts) and the Councilor for Security (PSC) have refused to break the contract with the company, which is facing a number of complaints for the use of violence and coercion in its actions.

Vox’s parliamentary spokesman, Iván Espinosa de los Monteros, has also recently asked the Prime Minister to clarify his position on the matter and to say whether he supports the words of the Minister for Equality, Irene Montero, who defined it as “a problem made up”.

Espinosa then went on to accuse the PSOE of “copying the Vox measures” to expel the squatters within a maximum period of 48 hours.

The political escalation has reached the Madrid City Council at the hands of the deputy mayor, Begoña Villacís, who last September went to a homeless area adjacent to the ring road to attend first-hand the demolition of some substandard housing.

Villacís uploaded several photos of the moment to his Twitter profile. “While others open their doors to them, in Madrid we work for a city model that is incompatible with squatting,” he wrote, in a leap that included shantytowns as part of the signifier of fashion.

His gesture drew harsh criticism even from his own party. The deputy Sara Giménez did not hide her rejection of her gesture and said that both the leader of the formation, Inés Arrimadas, and her, believed that one should not “confuse shantytowns with the occupation.” “I do not share the action that my partner Begoña Villacís has carried out at all,” said Giménez, a prominent member of the Gypsy Secretariat.

In the coming weeks, Congress will see several votes that will make it possible to reliably determine the position of each party on an issue in which half-truths, thick lines, economic interests and the proximity of a determining electoral cycle abound. The Spaniards, meanwhile, are clear when asked about the real problems they perceive, both in their environment and in themselves.