2024-10-26 08:16:00
This week, Spanish Housing Minister Isabel Rodríguez proposed “safeguarding” or “armoring” public housing and land in a bid to ensure more affordable homes for Spaniards amid a deepening housing crisis.
But the suggestion comes a little too late, 40 years to be precise.
🔴Plenary session on housing in Congress | Isabel Rodríguez: “It is necessary to protect the built heritage, public land and the efforts we are making so that they always serve the general interest” pic.twitter.com/ScnWU2ADkB
— Cadena SER (@La_SER) October 23, 2024
A new relationship of the Economic Cabinet of the main Spanish trade union Comisiones Obreras denounced the legacy of four “failed decades” regarding the current real estate market.
The biggest mistake of all was the disqualification and transfer of 2.7 million social housing units to the private market.
In other words, successive Spanish governments from 1982 to 2023 allowed public houses to be purchased by private companies, or allowed private construction companies to build public houses first and then let them fall into their hands, further lining their pockets .
Announcement
If these apartments had remained in the public housing stock and public investment in construction had been targeted effectively and correctly, the Spanish state would now have 4.7 million homes and would have the fourth largest housing stock in the EU, according to the relationship.
Instead, Spain‘s current public housing stock barely exceeds 290,000 units, one of the lowest in the EU only above Greece, Cyprus, Latvia and Estonia.
For four decades, Spanish governments of the left and right have allowed 162 billion euros of public money to go into tax cuts for the construction of private homes, benefiting wealthy taxpayers over those who need public housing.
Now the Bank of Spain has calculated that the country is missing 500,000 houses, most of which should be public.
There are clearly several reasons why rents and property prices are soaring in Spain, but the state’s responsibility for selling off public housing in the country should not be ignored.
Furthermore, in recent years the problems of drought have made more and more headlines in Spain, also because 75% of the country runs the serious risk of irreversible desertification.
2024 was a wetter year on average, with many reservoirs reaching levels they hadn’t seen in years, reaching 50% capacity.
But there is another water problem that Spain will have to face in the future and it is not just about scarcity, but about the pollution of the water we drink.
Nearly 200 Spanish municipalities contain nitrate levels higher than those established by European and Spanish regulations.
Map showing where nitrates in tap water are highest in Spain (2016-2019). Source: Ministry of the Environment
In fact, last March the European Court of Justice fined Spain for failing to prevent the presence of nitrates in tap water.
Brussels stressed that Spain had not raised the alarm about 82 contaminated areas in Castilla y León, Extremadura, Galicia, the Canary Islands, the Balearic Islands, Madrid and Valencia as vulnerable to nitrates.
Announcement
50 mg/l of nitrate ions is the maximum guideline value that the World Health Organization establishes for drinking water to avoid health problems in the most vulnerable groups and “to a lesser extent in the general population”.
Large-scale agriculture and livestock farming are the main causes of this nitrate and pesticide contamination in groundwater basins and surface water supplies.
The latest report from the Andalusian government reveals an increase in toxicity in the Guadiana, Guadalquivir and Mediterranean basins due to poor implementation of the EU directive in Spain regarding the control of these chemicals.
According to Ecologists in Action, more than 200,000 people in Spain consume tap water polluted by high levels of nitrates, and those living in villages or underpopulated areas known as “Empty Spain” are paying the brunt.
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