Valencia, (EFE).- Socialist candidates and mayors for the municipal elections on May 28 have highlighted the importance of the Housing Law as an electoral asset and have asked themselves “how is the PP going to explain” its position against the new rule.
This has been stated by the PSOE candidate for Mayor of Madrid, Reyes Maroto; the mayor of Vigo, Abel Caballero; the mayor of Seville, Antonio Muñoz; the socialist candidate for Mayor of Barcelona, Jaume Collboni; the mayor of Valladolid, Óscar Puente, and the general secretary of the Andalusian PSOE, Juan Espadas, speaking to the media upon arrival at the party’s Municipal Conference to be held this weekend in Valencia.
Maroto maintains that the law is for “a social majority”
For the PSOE candidate for Mayor of Madrid, Reyes Maroto, “like other laws, such as the pension reform”, the Housing Law “is designed for the social majority”.
In his opinion, in cities like Madrid, “housing is the main problem, especially for young people, but also for many families”, for which he has asked himself “how is the PP going to explain that this law is not good and does not it has to be developed, when faced with one of the main problems of Spaniards, which is access to decent housing”.
For Collboni the law will alleviate “a dramatic situation”
According to the Socialist candidate for Mayor of Barcelona, Jaume Collboni, the agreement on the Housing Law will alleviate “a dramatic situation due to the spiral of rising prices” and “contain this crazy rise in large cities that is affecting above all young people who want to emancipate themselves and can’t”.
“The law must also give legal guarantees and security to small owners so that they can put their flats on the rental market, because the next objective must be to increase the offer,” he added.
Caballero describes the law as “very important”
For the mayor of Vigo and president of the Spanish Federation of Municipalities and Provinces, Abel Caballero, the law is “very important”, given that “housing is an absolutely fundamental issue”.
“There they have to combine the music of the new law, which is welcome and that they approve it as soon as possible, with our own action from the town halls in these multi-vector ways of dealing with housing,” he defended.
This vision, Caballero has considered, should include “new guarantees, protected housing, significant percentages of protected housing in urban planning plans, a dimension of intervention by city councils in public rental housing and assessed rent in affordable housing for young people” .
Housing, for the mayor of Vigo, “is at the heart of what has to happen in the next four years”, an issue that can now be dealt with, he concluded, with “guarantees”.
Espadas criticizes the position of Díaz Ayuso and Moreno Bonilla
As for the general secretary of the Andalusian PSOE, Juan Espadas, the refusal of regional presidents such as the Madrid president, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, and the Andalusian, Juan Manuel Moreno Bonilla, to apply the norm, shows that “in the end they are the ones who mark the step” of the PP: “If I were Feijóo, I would worry.”
“Ayuso and Moreno Bonilla coordinate perfectly to raise the same message when there is an initiative from the Government of Spain”, he lamented.
For Espadas, the Housing Law is “one of the best news that Spanish citizens could have”, because it was a norm “long in demand, which the country needed”, and in his opinion, “governments that do not stand in profile, but that they intervene and propose to the citizens possibilities and affordable prices”.
In the case of the mayor of Seville, Antonio Muñoz, the Housing Law is “totally necessary, especially with the most vulnerable and young families in mind” because it is necessary to “regulate the market.”
For his part, the mayor of Valladolid, Óscar Puente, has considered the project “a necessary step, undoubtedly important” although “it could surely be better” because “there are always things that remain pending.”
“It addresses one of the problems that Spain has, which is access to housing for young people and people with fewer resources,” he indicated, and celebrated that “the government’s agenda focuses on the real problems they have people”.
“We lack a coalition culture”
Asked about the possibilities of the left in the elections after the disagreements between the parties of the coalition of the Government of Spain, the mayor of Valladolid, Óscar Puente, has considered that “in the end, the citizens rearrange their options and punish those who In an obvious way, they are playing for something other than the common interest”.
“We lack a coalition culture in this country,” he lamented, adding that all coalitions have “some kind of noise” and if this has not occurred in Spain, it has been “because only monocolor governments have lived, while others European countries have been accustomed to it for many years.
For Puente, however, “above the noise, the important thing is the progress agenda”, and he has concluded that “we must keep the positive, which has been a lot”.
For his part, the mayor of Vigo, Abel Caballero, has stated that he aspires to have “better results”: “In the last elections I had the highest result of the European countries with multi-party systems and I aspire to increase results; me and all the mayors and candidates of the PSOE”.