Spain's Congress rejects both housing decrees, 178 votes in a 350-seat house

Spain's Congress rejected two government housing decrees on Friday, with 178 votes against in the 350-seat lower house. The decrees were the cabinet's answer to street protests that sharpened after the eviction of María del Carmen Abascal, an 87-year-old resident of Madrid. That eviction was later reversed. The laws that would have made a repeat harder did not pass.

The government does not hold a majority. It needed Junts, the right-wing Catalan separatist party that has sometimes voted with Pedro Sánchez, and it lost that party late on Thursday. Junts said it wanted the text withdrawn and redrafted because, as written, it would reduce the supply of rental housing and raise prices. The centre-right Popular Party and the far-right Vox also voted against. Al Jazeera, drawing on AP and Reuters, reported that both decrees were shot down.

The first decree was built to stop evictions of vulnerable people, make speculation in real estate harder, tighten rules on short-term lets and offer tax incentives for renting and for building homes. The New York Times, reporting from Madrid, said the package would have suspended evictions of vulnerable tenants until 2030, and that it included tax breaks for landlords who cut rents, temporary bans on purchases by investment funds, and taxes and rules on tourist lets. Housing minister Isabel Rodríguez told the chamber before the vote that there was a wide consensus on the solutions, and that the bill already contained 90 percent of what Junts had asked for. The appeal did not move the votes.

The second decree would have made a residential lease renew automatically when it expired, which in practice would have turned many contracts into open-ended tenancies. A landlord who wanted to end one would have had to pay the tenant 12 months of rent. That clause is the one landlords and Junts treated as a supply risk. A owner who cannot recover a flat without a year's rent as compensation is less likely to let it in the first place, the party's argument ran. The government treated the same clause as the protection tenants had come into the street to demand.

Abascal's case is the event that fixed the calendar. She is 87 and lives in Madrid. Her eviction last month pulled thousands into protests and gave Sánchez a bill he could put to a vote quickly, by decree rather than by a full parliamentary bill. Decrees in Spain take effect and then need Congress to ratify them. Friday was that ratification. A defeat does not only stop the text. It leaves the cabinet looking short of a majority on the issue it chose as its answer to the protests.

The arithmetic is blunt. Congress has 350 seats. A majority is 176. The government lost by 178 votes against, Reuters reported. That is not a one-vote accident. It is Junts plus the two parties of the right. Sánchez can come back with a redrafted bill, which is what Junts said it wanted, or he can call the defeat a reason for an early election. The New York Times said the loss had already prompted calls for an early vote. He has not set a date.

What tenants have today is the law that existed before Friday, plus the reversed eviction of one woman. What they do not have is a pause on vulnerable evictions through 2030, a statutory block on fund purchases, or an automatic renewal. Landlords keep the right to end a lease on its existing terms. Cities that have been arguing over tourist flats, Barcelona and Madrid among them, do not get the national short-let rules the decree would have imposed.

Rodríguez's 90 percent claim is the number to test if the government redrafts. If Junts only wanted drafting changes, a second text could pass. If Junts has decided to stop voting with the coalition on domestic policy, the housing file will sit with the budget and the other decrees that need the same 176 votes. Friday showed the coalition is three seats short when that party walks out. The protests that followed Abascal's eviction have not ended. The legal answer the cabinet offered them has.