“All Spaniards have the right to enjoy decent and adequate housing. The public authorities will promote the necessary conditions and establish the relevant regulations to make this right effective, regulating the use of land in accordance with the general interest to prevent speculation. The community will participate in the capital gains generated by the urban action of public entities.”
Regarding housing, this is what the “sacrosanct” Constitution drafted in 1978 tells us. It is the supreme norm of the legal system of this State in which we have had to live.
It is not that I am a staunch defender of it, considering that it has become obsolete in just 46 years and that it served to “transition” reluctantly from a criminal dictatorship and that it does not take into account the particularities of the territories where it orders; but it is that not even the so-called constitutionalists are capable of applying the norm.
It seems that they only use the book to throw it in the face of whoever puts the new ―or not so new― realities on the table. Today, the right to enjoy decent housing is not fulfilled, nor do the public authorities make this right effective by avoiding speculation, nor does the community participate in the capital gains generated by urban action.
The Government of the Canary Islands, the island councils, and the town councils do not seem to care much about the situation either. I don't know if it's due to incompetence, negligence, or interests that we don't know ―or do know―, but they have also been responsible for leading citizens to an unsustainable situation. And let's remember that there have been governments, presidents, and mayors of different parties and stripes, even the so-called progressives. It is evident that the commodification of housing
brings problems for many people and benefits for a few who are usually the same as always.
Sadly, our rulers tend to align themselves more with these few than with the great social majority. We learned a few days ago through La Voz de Lanzarote, and according to the Fotocasa portal, that the price of rent in the archipelago has risen by 137% in the last decade. In the same ten-year period, according to a job offer portal, salaries only rose by 6%. The data is scandalous and truly frightening.
Lanzarote, of course, is a clear example of this absurdity. We have exorbitant purchase prices, there are more than 20,000 empty homes, and we have more than 8,000 vacation homes. If we search the real estate portals that we all know, we will find less than 15 homes for long-term rent, of course, with unaffordable prices for workers. On our island, there are hotels making tricks to accommodate their employees because they have nowhere to live, well, what was missing, that your employer is also your landlord.
The feeling of not being able to build a home with everything that entails is desperate. The lovers of brick and cement talk about the fact that social housing has not been built, and it is true, but... Is it necessary with 20,000 empty homes? Do we have to continue gentrifying the neighborhoods with the more than 8,000 vacation homes at the cost of losing neighbors? Lanzarote is a Biosphere Reserve, do we grow in the Jable, in the Malpaís de la Corona, or in Los Ancones?
Do we have resources to grow when we are denying water for tomatoes and potatoes to our farmers? And most importantly: is the unmeasured growth, in which we are already immersed, leading to an increase in well-being?
Some time ago, I thought that having a quality public education, a public health system with the best staff and facilities, and decent housing that could be turned into a home were unquestionable rights. We have already lost one of them and we are close to losing the other two. Endless waiting lists, more and more injection of public money into private clinics, students in barracks, schools with inadequate facilities that force children to be sent home so that they do not burn with the increasingly frequent heat waves, and very expensive homes at 30 years with abusive interest rates that take almost the entire salary. We have something left, we have the hope that when your poor grandmother dies, you will have a home that becomes your home... although some, for sure, will turn it into an AirBnb.
Rafa Jiménez - spokesperson for Drago Canarias.
