On paper they continue to constitute a coalition, but the two parties that make up the bicolor government are increasingly distanced. An eloquent example of this process of progressive distancing is that Unidas Podemos found out yesterday at the same time as the 4,000 attendees at a PSOE event in Valencia a month and a half after the elections on May 28 that Pedro Sánchez will lead the Council of Ministers who share a plan to rent out 50,000 Sareb flats at "affordable prices".
Beyond the forms, not even the background was inconsequential, since this is not just any promise. The purple formation has been proposing since the beginning of the legislature that the properties managed by the so-called bad bank be incorporated into the public rental park and, despite its attempts -with the support of ERC and EH Bildu- for this measure to be included in the Housing Law agreed last week in Congress, was met with the rejection of his partner in Moncloa.
In United We Can they recognized yesterday that they had been "annoyed" that the president made on his own and a pre-election meeting of his party an announcement that is the responsibility of the Executive as a whole and that will benefit city councils and autonomous communities, including many governed under its acronym. Sánchez used the framework of a convention with his mayoral candidates to express his commitment to solving the "problem" of access to a house.
It is not the only issue for which the rift between the two halves of the central Executive has widened these days. In the PSOE they are now willing to negotiate with the PP the amendments that they have presented to their reform of the law of the only yes is yes to guarantee their essential support to be able to approve it given the certainty that the formation led by Ione Belarra is going to vote against after the debate that will be held next Thursday in the Congress of Deputies.
The partners had already shown divergent positions in the admission for processing of the proposal presented unilaterally by the Socialists to put an end to the almost one thousand reductions in sentences for rapists and sexual offenders that the application of the new norm has allowed. This time, however, the image of the rupture is going to be even more powerful since the party with the most weight in the Government is going to modify, with the help of the popular, the star measure of the Minister of Equality, Irene Montero.
Until now, the position held in Ferraz had been not to agree to negotiate any changes with Alberto Núñez Feijóo's party regarding his bill to reform the only yes is yes, arguing that they would have to be the ones to "portray" themselves explaining their vote if they did not allow it to go ahead. Now they change their strategy and are inclined to accept their "technical amendments" at the doors of the presentation and the Justice Commission that are held today and tomorrow and in which they have to close the adjustments to the original text.
Against this backdrop, Sánchez has issued an apology for the first time five months after the cascade of reductions in sentences for sexual crimes began after the entry into force of the norm for which in the purple wing of La Moncloa they continue to blame to the "macho judges". "I apologize to the victims and we are going to put a solution to the unwanted effects," said the president in an interview published yesterday in the newspapers of the Vocento group.
Despite the "social alarm" that the PSOE recognizes has been caused by the Law for the Comprehensive Guarantee of Sexual Freedom -by its technical name-, they consider the electoral wear and tear that could have caused them if the elections had been held before reform. Against her approval they are going to have the entire group of United We Can, including the second vice president, Yolanda Díaz, who despite her friction with Montero over this matter has already announced that she will not break the voting discipline.
Among the amendments registered by the PP to the text of the reform is the reintroduction of "sexual assault by deceit or abuse of trust or authority for minors under 18 and over 16", because its declassification had "left outside the scope of protection adolescents against these behaviors committed by adults”, and the responsibility of the legal person in cases of degrading treatment, workplace harassment or real estate mobbing. In Sánchez's team they now estimate that "technical" issues such as these can improve their proposal and they only put as a red line an increase in sentences compared to those of the old Penal Code, which is what they intend to recover with their change.
Parallel to the controversy of only yes is yes, the new clash between partners has been caused by the unilateral announcement of the plan to make Sareb's assets profitable. The Government's socialist quota proposes making 21,000 homes available to municipalities and autonomous communities, promoting social rental with the 14,000 already inhabited in that park and promoting the construction of another 15,000 on land that the entity also has.
From United We Can point out yesterday that it is a measure that they have been demanding for more than three years, although they still pointed out that it is "very good news" and that "I wish it had come sooner." «We think that not only these, but all the Sareb homes should form part of the public park. Much remains to be done," stressed the Minister of Social Rights, Ione Belarra, via Twitter.
In the act of the PSOE Sánchez, the objective was also set to increase the number of buildings owned by the administrations to 20%, which currently stands at 3% in contrast to the European average of 9%. For the meager amount of that figure in Spain, he blamed the PP for "privatizing" by selling them to "vulture funds" the houses that "the town halls built with the effort of the people."
«Housing is a constitutional right, but not a real right. If we increase the offer not with more free housing, but with public housing, it will serve to better cushion and control the evolution of the price, "said the president yesterday. It is basically what his partner also thinks of him, but not even in what they agree on they have been able to keep pace lately.
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