The head of the Treasury, María Jesús Montero, assured this Thursday that the land that the Ministry of Defense will make available to autonomous communities and city councils to build 20,000 social rental homes "will not involve any expense" for those administrations.
In statements to the press in the corridors of Congress, Montero stated that the acquisition of land for building "will not have an added cost for the autonomous communities or city councils", but that "it will be financed with state resources that are already contemplated."
"It is going to be its own operation, within the framework and within the Government of Spain," added the Deputy Secretary General of the PSOE, adding: "That means that it will not be like in other cases in which some city council that has been interested in some land (of Defense) has had to buy it, or some community that has wanted land to dedicate it to some use and has bought it."
Montero said that the Government will give all the details when the agreement is approved in the Council of Ministers, which, according to sources from the Ministry of Transport, which includes Housing, will not be in the next one, on Wednesday, May 3, but it could be in the following one, on Tuesday, May 9.
The Minister of Finance explained that the agreement with Defense that the Ministry of Transport has to sign through Sepes "is quite advanced" and that "there is a large representation of the entire Spanish geography within the agreement."
She also stated that "they are Defense lands that are no longer strategic for the defense of the country at this time," and that "therefore they cannot be chosen" now, since it is the land that a Defense company already "had for its valuation and subsequent sale."
"We are finalizing the agreement that we will take to the Council of Ministers shortly to make it possible for Sepes to acquire these lands in compliance with the Defense Law; everything is underway, everything is prepared, and with the favorable reports from the Treasury, which is the most important thing in this case," she indicated regarding the work of the department she directs.
She continued: "From there, each city council, each autonomous community, has to exercise its powers, because the Government of Spain cannot subtract the powers of other administrations, and what we want is that all of us together are capable of speeding up those processes so that the entirety of homes is built in the shortest possible time."
City councils will obtain free land from Defense for social housing
According to the Treasury, the acquisition of land for building "will not have any added cost for autonomous communities or city councils"
