The Communist Party of the Workers of Spain (PCTE) welcomes the scale and determination of the mobilisations for the right to housing taking place across the country, particularly in Puerta del Sol, following the eviction of Maricarmen.
The coalition Government has been forced, solely and exclusively as a result of popular pressure in the streets, to approve two Royal Decrees introducing a number of urgent measures, at a time when the relentless rise in rental and property prices, together with the threat of eviction, is making access to housing increasingly difficult for millions of workers.
Once again, organisation and struggle have proven to be the most powerful tools at our disposal: they enable us to win gains and to impose our interests. The lesson that we, as the working class, must draw is the need to continue further down this path. For some time now, the number of strikes and mobilisations by different sectors of workers has been steadily increasing in Spain, and the task now must be to strengthen a unified perspective: organisational unity and programmatic unity.
This must take place not only in the streets, but also in every workplace and every neighbourhood. The example set by social struggle and mobilisation must be carried over into everyday action, beginning in the workplaces, which must become centres of militancy capable of ensuring a class-based perspective.
This class perspective must also increasingly permeate the struggle for housing itself, both in form and in content. The immediate struggle for access to housing cannot be limited to calls for intervention in the housing market. The capitalist class constantly erodes the purchasing power of the working majority in pursuit of higher profits, and therefore the struggle for higher wages must occupy a central place in any class struggle over housing.
If the approval of both Royal Decrees should be attributed exclusively to popular mobilisation, the largely timid content of the measures, their concessions to rentier interests, and their failure to respond to the scale of the emergency and to prevailing social demands are the responsibility of the coalition Government.
Based on the content that has emerged so far, the extension of existing tenancy agreements, the ban on housing purchases by vulture funds until 2028, and the ban on evictions until 2030 may be regarded as small but necessary steps. Yet their very time limits reveal an important weakness: the fact that these measures extend only until 2028 and 2030 shows that the intention is to provide temporary relief rather than a long-term structural solution capable of guaranteeing access to housing.
Particularly noteworthy are the tax breaks for landlords who rent out properties at below-market prices. After the exorbitant rise in housing costs over the past decade, what should simply be regarded as “normal” is thus being embedded in the collective imagination as a practice deserving of reward.
The granting of greater tax benefits to property owners has been a general trend over the past decade, eight years of which have seen social-democratic governments in office. The underlying logic of the system of public subsidies and tax incentives, whether directed straight to property owners or channelled to them through tenants, remains the permanent transfer of income derived from labour into private hands.
Pending a closer examination of the fine print, the measures may also include regulations governing seasonal and short-term rentals. It should be recalled that both the Housing Law adopted in 2023 and the coalition agreement signed by the PSOE and Sumar in October of that year left seasonal rentals entirely outside the scope of regulation. Property owners have since exploited this loophole to continue raising prices, as demonstrated by the dramatic growth of this form of rental.
All of the above demonstrates the inability of any capitalist Government to intervene actively and effectively in the housing market in order to guarantee access to housing for the entire population. Ultimately, the underlying problem lies in the fact that housing is treated as a commodity.
Challenging and ultimately putting an end to housing’s status as a commodity requires rebuilding a working-class opposition to capital that is not subordinated to other political agendas or to the interests of other social classes, and that is not constrained by the limits of what is deemed possible within the existing system or the state.
Such a working-class opposition must, while fighting for concrete measures within capitalism, also raise the need to overcome this mode of production and to build a society in which housing can genuinely become an essential right.
September 29th, 2026
Press Office of the PCTE