Tenant unions will protest across Spain before Congress votes on Friday, 2 October. They want lawmakers to approve both housing decrees, covering evictions, rent controls and automatic lease renewals.
The Confederation of Tenants' Unions has called demonstrations outside every town hall across Spain on Thursday at 8pm. Protesters will bring saucepans. The group says it wants to pressure parliamentary parties before Friday's extraordinary plenary session and defend the full housing package.
Congress will vote on two government decree-laws on Friday, 2 October. The first covers anti-eviction measures and rent regulation. The second would create automatic renewals for existing rental contracts.
The pressure is rising.
Junts and Podemos have not confirmed how they will vote. The government therefore faces an uncertain path to the parliamentary support needed for both texts to pass and enter into force.
The government’s housing response was accelerated after the eviction of 87-year-old Maricarmen Abascal became a national protest trigger. The case helped turn an individual eviction into a wider campaign over Spain’s housing policies.
The decision to split the measures has become the main dispute. Unions fear lawmakers could approve the immediate protections against evictions and rent increases while rejecting automatic lease renewals, which they see as the more lasting change.
That is why the campaign targets every party in Congress, not just the government. The unions say six days of street protests pushed Pedro Sánchez's government to accept almost all the measures in the Decreto Maricarmen.
They now want every parliamentary group to back both decrees. Reuters and Euronews have reported that the government is trying to secure a majority for the two separate texts.
The campaign continues.
The Confederation says emergency legislation cannot undo decades of housing policy that turned homes into a business. It sees the vote as a chance to change that approach. The group also links the effort to a wider campaign for a general housing strike.
The campaign’s demands go beyond the measures currently before Congress. Organisers are also calling for tighter controls on seasonal, short-term and room rentals, with some groups demanding that rents should not rise at all in certain situations.
Twenty-two demonstrations have been confirmed for the weekend of 3 and 4 October. They are planned in Madrid, València, Cádiz, Sevilla, Palma, Guadalajara, Girona, L'Hospitalet de Llobregat, Zaragoza, Donostia, Gasteiz, Iruñea, Huelva, Granada, Valladolid, A Coruña, Toledo, Vigo, Bilbo, Logroño and Murcia.
A column will also travel from Barcelona to the event in L'Hospitalet de Llobregat. The mobilisation follows several days of protests in cities across Spain. Euronews reported one of them, a protest camp on Madrid's Puerta del Sol.
The L'Hospitalet event was first planned as a tribute to Olga, a resident who died by suicide after an eviction. Unions now want it to serve as both a tribute and a demand that no one face the same situation again.
The immediate political test is simple. Approval of only one decree would leave the package incomplete.
That is the risk.
Tenant unions are focusing their pressure on both votes. They do not see the anti-eviction measures and automatic renewals as interchangeable. Until Congress acts, the protections remain proposals awaiting convalidation. Friday's decision will show whether the government's housing response can survive the parliamentary arithmetic.
