There are political decisions that do not need too much explanation. They are understood on their own. Like the one to reject the extension of rent controls in the midst of a housing crisis.
It is not a technical nuance nor a minor debate. It is a choice.
Because when millions of people are on the edge of paying their house, there is no middle ground: you either protect people or you protect business. And this time, the People's Party, Vox, and Junts have made their position clear. The Basque Nationalist Party, for its part, opted for abstention, that sophisticated way of not assuming the political cost of a decision.
Then will come the speeches about market freedom. About the freedom to set prices. About freedom, in short, as long as one can pay.
Because housing, according to the Spanish Constitution, is not a luxury. It is a right. Article 47 leaves no room for ambiguity: public authorities must guarantee access to housing and prevent speculation.
Avoid it.
Do not consider it. Do not justify it. Do not let it happen.
Avoid it.
And this is where politics becomes uncomfortable. Because Spain is not a centralized state regarding housing. The powers are transferred to the autonomous communities, which have real capacity to plan public housing, regulate land, intervene in the rental market, and design access policies.
And yet, many of those communities have been governed for years by those who today criticize any attempt at regulation. The Popular Party and Vox manage territories where the problem of access to housing has only worsened. In the Canary Islands, moreover, with the participation of Coalición Canaria.
The question is inevitable: where is the public housing that should have been built? Where are the structural solutions that the market, supposedly, was going to correct on its own?
Because when the housing market becomes a machine for expelling people from their neighborhoods, when working no longer guarantees a roof, and when rent becomes an unbearable burden, inaction is also a form of governing.
But there is something else. Because if speculation skyrockets and access to housing deteriorates, one must wonder why another constitutional principle is not activated: that of article 128.2, which establishes that all the wealth of the country is subordinated to the general interest.
It is striking that the Constitution is invoked firmly in some debates, but becomes flexible in others.
Here nobody is proposing to eliminate the market or question private property. It is about something more basic: establishing reasonable limits in an essential area to prevent the right to do business from prevailing over the right to have a roof.
In an unprecedented housing crisis, political decisions matter. And so do omissions.
Because if it is not regulated, someone loses.
And if it is not protected, someone is left out.