Sánchez raises his promise of affordable rentals by 43,000 more homes and the PP calls him an "overheated dish"

The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, has threaded a markedly electoralist speech before the Plenary Session of Congress in which he wanted to point out the “optimism of the street” and the good progress of the economy. “A success for the country,” he said, which contradicts the “doomsayers of the apocalypse.”

This phrase pronounced at the beginning of his speech has set the tone for a speech fraught with triumphalism that has rounded off with the announcement of the creation of 43,000 more public homes that will be financed with the help of a line of credit from the ICO fed with 4,000 million euros. european funds. This announcement has been disqualified by the PP spokeswoman, Cuca Gamarra, who has labeled it as a “reheated dish” because that offer was already put on the table months ago by the Minister of Transport, Raquel Sánchez.

According to Sánchez, his expansionary spending strategy is also compatible with the reduction of the deficit and the debt. He believes that his policy is building a “fairer and more sustainable economy.”

The last piece to carry out this purpose has been the pension reform that has been enshrined, together with the labor reform, “with social peace”. A peace that has been achieved, he said, “with a lot of dialogue” and “dignifying people's lives”. In this way, he has made an idyllic portrait of his administration that he has compared to a dark photograph of the “neoliberal right-wing” stage.

Sánchez has concluded this pre-electoral chapter by delving into his latest proposals on housing policy. After almost four years in La Moncloa and only five weeks before the elections, the president intends to “turn housing into the fifth pillar of the welfare state” leaving behind the policy that the PP deployed in this field “causing the real estate bubble that brought unemployment and corruption.

The announcement that Moncloa anticipated came then: the Government is going to finance the promotion of another 43,000 homes for rent at affordable prices. Will they be new or rehabilitated homes. For this, a line of 4,000 million from the ICO will be opened with money from European funds. In this way, the promise of public housing will rise to a total of 93,000.

After this message prepared to mark the high point of his speech, the head of the Executive has referred to the new relations with Morocco marked by the transfer of the Sahara to Rabat that he favored with the rejection of the Congress of Deputies and which he did not has made any allusion. In his opinion, his management has managed to reduce the arrival of illegal immigrants to the peninsula and the Canary Islands and has boosted the presence of Spanish companies in the neighboring country.

Before finishing, the president has attacked the “bank of the right and the ultra-right” who, he has said, “runs to Brussels to boycott all the agreements reached in Spain”. This, he assured, “causes me ashamed of others”. “Spain responds today as it did not a dark decade ago: protecting and not cutting, agreeing and not imposing.”

Cuca Gamarra, spokesman for the PP in Congress, at a time during his speech. JAVIER BARBANCHO

The spokesperson for the PP, Cuca Gamarra, has replied to the speech by the President of the Government, assuming that the “country wants change”. The deputy has delved into the idea that the Executive “is in decomposition”. If Sánchez has chosen the issues that he considers to benefit him, the popular representative has chosen just the opposite, those that cast shadows on government management.

Thus, Gamarra has referred to the destruction of the yes-is-yes law and to the still unbridled inflation. He has also delved into the Housing Law proposed by the Government and which is based, he has assured, “on lies” and on “radicalism and populism”. Gamarra regretted that after four years in government, Sánchez now “has pulled Sareb's promise of 50,000 homes out of his sleeve”. “A bluff and a lie”, he stated before adding that the 43,000 homes announced today by the president were already anticipated by the Minister of Transport, Raquel Sánchez. In short: “A reheated dish.”

The popular spokesperson dedicated a good part of her speech to criticizing Sánchez's foreign policy, referring to relations with Morocco marked by the ceding of the Sahara to the Alaouite regime decided by the president with the staunch opposition of Congress. Gamarra has reproached him for not having a state policy because he keeps the first opposition party completely out of it.. The PP policy ended its speech by stating that the time of this government “has run out”: “Goodbye, Mr. Sánchez, goodbye.”

The intervention of the Vox leader has been a complete disqualification of government policy. Santiago Abascal has reproached Sánchez for only going to Congress to launch “sermons and rallies” and “not answer anything”. The idea of the continuous rally has also been highlighted by ERC.

Podemos underlines the “pre-election” framework

Despite the new announcement on housing made by Sánchez, Podemos has questioned his real commitment to solving the problem and has framed the measures launched in the context of the electoral campaign. “Everyone has seen what has happened in these three years of legislature”, Ione Belarra pointed out in statements to the media, in which she explained that if there is a Housing Law it is because her party has had to pressure and use ” all his political influence” to get it. Thus, he has said that they are “pre-election announcements” that he trusts that they can be fulfilled, although he has stressed that to ensure this he needs a strong Podemos.

The Minister of Social Rights has “doubts” that the details about the two announcements that the president has chained “are on the table”, since only with the Housing Law it has taken three years. Asked if she fears that the PSOE is taking away her flag on this issue, Belarra has vindicated her work over the years to push and put forward proposals and has stressed that the fundamental thing is that after the elections Sánchez continues to have as a “priority” to guarantee the living place.

Already in the parliamentary debate itself, in Unidas Podemos they have chosen to divide the speaking time among their different representatives. The one from En Común Podem, Jaume Asens, has endlessly praised the Executive's policy and has only dedicated the final sentence of his speech to urging Sánchez to abandon the pact with the PP to reform the law of yes is yes.

On the contrary, the representative of Podemos, Javier Sánchez Serna, has harshly criticized the policy in relation to the war in Ukraine, marked in his opinion by warmongering and not by diplomacy, and has also attacked the rectification of the law of the yes is yes “agreed with the right”. If Sánchez Serna wanted to highlight the work carried out by the Minister of Social Rights, Ione Belarra, his colleague Enrique Santiago has chosen to review that of Vice President Yolanda Díaz.

ERC, for its part, has focused on politics in relation to the war in Ukraine and also with Morocco. His deputy Marta Rosique has taken the opportunity to point out to the Government for espionage against the independence movement and has accused Sánchez of “giving in to the blackmail of Morocco”. His colleague Maria Carvalho has lashed out against the government’s migration policy and its agreements with Morocco that cause, she said, the death of five people a day in their attempt to reach Spain from the African coasts. Carvalho has taken the podium wearing a T-shirt with a T-shirt with a legend against the “massacre of Melilla.”