Spanish government loses first of two votes to ratify emergency housing measures

The Spanish parliament in Madrid (Eduardo Parra/Europa Press/AP)

Spain’s government has lost a key vote to ratify a package of emergency measures aimed at tackling the nation’s housing affordability crisis.

The legislators convened on Friday as protesters marched on parliament demanding help for renters.

Catalan separatist party Junts had announced hours before the ballot that it would vote against the package, which doomed the measures when combined with the “No” from the centre-right Popular Party and far-right Vox.

The vote was loudly jeered by protesters who had gathered nearby.

The rejected decree included measures the government said would stop evictions of vulnerable people, make property speculation harder and provide tax incentives to encourage renting.

The parliament is also expected to reject a second decree that would make residential leases automatically renew and oblige an owner who wants to break a contract to compensate a tenant with a year’s rent.

The Popular Party, Vox, Junts and two other smaller parties have said they will not back it.

The legislative defeat sparked speculation in Spanish media that Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez could consider bringing forward elections from next year. He did not speak when he arrived at the chamber in central Madrid.

Mr Sanchez spoke at the end of a five-hour debate, making a last-gasp appeal to legislators to vote for the measures which he called “necessary”.

“What is behind these decrees is the desire to instil order and a sense of humanity in a market that if we do not rein it in will destroy our society,” he told the other 349 members.

“Do the right thing, or history will judge you, and sooner than you think,” Mr Sanchez concluded before each legislator voted by roll call.

The government decrees were intended to quell a public uproar after the televised eviction of an 87-year-old woman last week in Madrid that sparked protests and a camp-in that has occupied Madrid’s most important square ever since.

Outside the parliament, protesters held up homemade signs with images of vultures on them, denouncing the property speculators they blame for driving up prices.