Ione Belarra, social affairs minister in Spain’s leftwing government, champions a bill aiming at rent controls (“Spain takes on private equity landlords as housing costs soar”, Report, November 15). She says that the housing business can keep going, but “not at the price that there are evictions, or that people have to pay more than 30 per cent of their income in rent”.
Just for your information, in the happy noughties many people as poor as church mice took out a mortgage, and quite a few more spent (and apparently keep spending) more than 30 per cent of their income on rent. What Belarra’s radical Podemos party proposes is a ban on evictions while putting limits on the ability of housing organisations to operate.
Things are by no means any betteron the opposition benches. Pablo Casado, leader of the populist right People’s party (PP) and probable next prime minister, recently tried to ridicule the government’s energy policy, by pointing out solar energy doesn’t work at night.
It was meant as a joke but not one of the attendees laughed.
In Spain, it seems, our economic and energy woes are compounded by the mediocrity of our political class.
Ruben F Pola
Barcelona, Spain
Letter: Spain’s politicians all at sea on rent controls and solar
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