Tens of thousands of people have taken to the streets of Madrid and other Spanish cities as they step up demands for action to tackle a mounting housing crisis after government measures were struck down by the opposition.
Demonstrators on Saturday waved posters calling for a general strike after the measures drawn up to address mass anger over the eviction of an 87-year-old woman in Madrid, and other housing issues, were rejected in parliament on Friday.
Authorities said 70,000 people were protesting. Organisers put the figure at 500,000.
“It’s a shame,” Nando de Anguulo, 26, who joined the protest in Madrid, told Reuters. “It only proves that it is us, the people, who have to adapt to the political parties, and not the politicians to what the people want, and this can’t go on like that.”
Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, may call a snap election for November after the legislation failed to pass, Spanish media reported on Friday, and would be watching the strength of Saturday’s protests before making a decision.
The demonstrations have dominated the national conversation, breathing new life into Sánchez’s beleaguered government and shifting attention away from the lingering impact of recent events in Ceuta.
Protests on Saturday were peaceful in 50 Spanish cities. In the south-eastern city of Valencia, demonstrators clashed with police who fired rubber bullets and teargas to break up the protests.
About 30 people managed to get inside the City of Arts and Sciences, a landmark cultural building in the city, before they were ousted by police.
One protester in Madrid, Marcos Sainz, a librarian, 26, said he used to rent a two-bedroom apartment with friends for a monthly rent of 900 euros ($1,000) but that a one-bedroom flat often now cost 1,000 euros – or half the median monthly salary in the capital.
He told AFP he would protest rental spikes “until someone dares to regulate it all, as (otherwise) we’ll all have to leave Madrid and that would be a shame as I am from Madrid”.
Javier, 31, a solar panel installer, said: “We are demanding a fundamental right: decent housing, stability and conditions allowing us to construct a decent life project.” He added: “I spend half of my salary on a tiny room.”
“What we are feeling in the streets is a new energy that we haven’t seen in a long time, an energy that is showing that eight days of people power can achieve more than eight years of progressive government,” Valeria Racu, one of the spokespeople of the Tenants’ Union organising the protest, said in a statement.
“Now begins real politics – politics which has always belonged to the people and which will return once and for all to the streets,” she said.
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Late on Saturday groups of far-right protesters, some of them performing Nazi salutes, tried to get to the camp in Madrid but were blocked by police.
One video posted on the website of Spanish daily El País showed police chasing some members of the group through the streets and the newspaper also reported that officers had made three arrests.
On Friday, Sánchez’s Socialist-led coalition put forward two decrees that included a range of measures aimed at improving access to housing, from a ban on evictions until 2030 to the regulation of temporary lettings and lettings by room.
Despite the anger of the protesters outside parliament, the conservative People’s party, the far-right Vox and the Catalan pro-independence party Junts voted against both decrees.
The People’s party said it had voted in line with its belief that building, rather than regulating, was the best way to address the crisis. “Housing doesn’t become more affordable through decrees; it becomes more affordable by building more homes,” said the lawmaker Juan Bravo.
News of the package’s rejection was met with boos and cries of “shame” outside. “Your profits, our misery,” the protesters chanted.
The long-simmering anger at soaring housing costs boiled over late last month, when 87-year-old Maricarmen Abascal, who uses a wheelchair, was evicted from the home she had lived in for 70 years. The octogenarian said she was unable to afford the 230% rent hike demanded by the investment fund that bought her apartment.
Reuters and AFP contributed to this report.