Appearance by the President of the Government of Spain

Alicante

APPEARANCE BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE GOVERNMENT OF SPAIN

Good morning, young people, friends.

First of all, please allow me, both the President of the Generalitat and the Government Delegate, the Vice-president and the other authorities, to express, on my behalf and also on behalf of the Government of Spain, our condolences to the victims of this tragic fire which has taken place in the old people's home in Moncada.

The Government of Spain also expressly wishes for the speedy recovery of those hospitalised. And thirdly, and I would also like to do so in this act, which, as the President of the Community said earlier, is intergenerational, because this is an intergenerational society and, therefore, this solidarity must be intergenerational. To express the recognition that, especially during these long months of the pandemic, we must give to a generation, the generation of our elders, who, if today we enjoy this community and enjoy this great country that is Spain, as the minister and the president said earlier, it is thanks to the work of our elders.

For me, president, and also for the minister, for the Government of Spain, to be in the Comunitat Valenciana, to be in the province of Alicante, to be in the city of Alicante, is a real pleasure. And, above all, to do something as important as highlighting and presenting this important commitment to Alicante society and to the country as a whole, because it is a commitment, the commitment of the Government of Spain to the fifth pillar of the welfare state that I mentioned earlier.

I think you have made a very important point, dear Ximo. A decent country cannot tolerate the lack of employment, job insecurity, the difficulties of economic and social integration, or the delay in becoming independent suffered by many of our young people. We cannot allow this. That is why we have always conceived policies, sectoral policies for young people, as a real state policy. This is how we should conceive youth policies: as a state policy.

With a policy, for example, that has increased scholarships to 2 billion euros by more than 40% since we were in Government three years ago to promote precisely something that President Puig mentioned, which is this social lift, this social mobility that ultimately proves something; it is precisely that we give opportunities to all our fellow citizens and especially to our young people, with a new Vocational Training Law, but also, soon, with a new Universities Law or a few years ago - we are now doing it - the development of a new Education Law, which, among other things, aims to contribute to freedom, to the intellectual development of our young people and also to the employability of our young people in a country where, unfortunately, we still have a lot of youth unemployment.

It is true that today our country is below 30% youth unemployment after 10 consecutive months of falling unemployment, but it is clear that this is still an absolutely unacceptable unemployment figure, unworthy of a country like ours, a country like Spain.

We talk about a fair economic recovery and for that economic recovery to be fair, it obviously has to be led by our young people. It is about creating jobs, creating more jobs, but above all, as President Puig and the minister commented earlier, it is also about creating decent jobs.

This explains the reason for the labour reform, a great social agreement unheard of in recent decades. We are used to seeing impositions in something as fundamental as labour relations. A great social agreement built by the Government of Spain with the leading participation of social agents, i.e., employers and trade unions, which basically focuses all their efforts on something that the President of the Generalitat said earlier: firstly, to tackle one of the main problems affecting our labour market and young people in particular, which is, obviously, precariousness; and secondly, also the high level of temporary employment.

I always give this figure so that we are aware of the country we live in: what are the labour relations that many workers suffer. One third of the contracts in our labour market are contracts of fewer than five days. That is called precariousness, that is called temporariness. And this is called, in short, the impossibility for many groups, particularly the young population, of being able to become independent and build an autonomous life project, as the minister referred to earlier.

And hence also the largest increase in the history of the minimum wage. It has gone from 735 euros to 935 euros and we are going to continue increasing it throughout this legislature in order to reach our commitment, which is none other than that of the European Social Charter. I say this in this context, in this wonderful environment that you have here in Alicante, and that is to achieve 60% of the average wage before the end of this legislature. And we are also now, and this is why we have come here, to the city of Alicante, working to make housing the fifth pillar of the Welfare State.

And I would like to recall today what our Constitution says: Article 47 of our Constitution reads as follows: All Spaniards have the right to enjoy decent and adequate housing and that, therefore, the public authorities shall promote the necessary conditions and establish the relevant rules to make this right effective, regulating land use in accordance with the general interest. And, I repeat, in the general interest to prevent speculation and in a context in which we are seeing a strong economic recovery in a sector as important as the housing sector, which generates a great deal of employment, and we are effectively committed to the vitality and strength of a sector such as the construction sector.

Clearly, what we also need is to boost public engagement. Thus, along with health and education, pensions and dependency, which represent the other four pillars of the Welfare State, housing is the fifth pillar of the Welfare State because, after all, a society that is worthy and proud of its progress cannot allow many of its citizens not to have a decent place to live.

And, as the Minister for Housing said earlier, when we talk about housing we are talking above all about young people. We know that the independence of young people is a drama.

Nowadays it has to be called by its name. It is a drama because it represents the greatest of inequalities. According to data from the Emancipation Observatory of the Youth Council, in the middle of last year, only 14.9%, 15% of young people in our country, under the age of 30, became independent from a residential point of view and, therefore, if we turn it around, this means that 85% of young people in our country continue to live in the family home.

If we go to areas such as this one, to urban areas that also benefit as tourist destinations, such as Alicante, then obviously renting at market prices puts a heavy economic strain on families, especially young people and the most vulnerable families, i.e. those with the least resources. 37.4% of the Spanish population that rents at market price, i.e. excluding subsidised housing, spends more than 40% of their income on rent. And this, in the end, makes economic stability impossible and therefore increases uncertainty. And this is obviously very difficult to manage for many young people in our country.

As I said before, our priority is to work to dignify the lives of the social majority in our country and that is why we want to build this fifth pillar of the welfare state. To make housing, as our Constitution tells us, a real right and not a problem, especially for our young people. To this end, as the minister has rightly said, we are implementing different policies within the housing policy.

Firstly, yesterday in the Council of Ministers we approved the new State Plan for Access to Housing 2022-2025. We have also launched the Bono Alquiler Joven (Youth Rental Voucher) to help our young people in our country to become independent sooner. I believe this is an important innovation in public policy because it empowers young people; ultimately it is you who determine how to use the resources that the Spanish State will be transferring to young people directly. And I think it is also very important to highlight this because we innovate in public policies. And finally, yesterday in the Council of Ministers we also spoke not only of the quantity of quality, but also of the dignity of our architecture with this Law on the quality of architecture that we are going to send to the Spanish Parliament for its procedural path. And very soon, as the president and the minister have said, we will approve the first Housing Law in our country. The truth is that it sounds unbelievable that 40 years later in our country we do not have a state housing law. It sounds unbelievable because we are talking about a constitutional right, which is a problem for many, many citizens, in particular the young people who suffer from it. But in any case, here we are. We are going to implement this housing law and we will soon bring it to the Council of Ministers.

In any case, until this draft law reaches the Council of Ministers, I would like to explain, albeit briefly, what measures are included in the decisions we took yesterday in the Council of Ministers.

Firstly, as I said before, we are creating this rental voucher for young people, to become independent, for access to housing for our young people, which will consist of a monthly amount of 250 euros for rent for young people between 18 and 35 years old who can prove they have a low income from work. This new plan is being allocated a very significant amount of money. We are talking about 400 million euros over the next two years and it will be in place for at least the next two years. And I am also convinced that this is going to be one of the policies that is here to stay, that it is going to expand and extend both in terms of economic quantity and number of beneficiaries over the coming years.

Together with this youth rental voucher, which is directly allocated in the General State Budget that will be implemented throughout 2022, the second axis is the State Plan for Access to Housing 2022-2025, to which the minister referred earlier, which will reinforce this Youth Voucher with other direct rental subsidies for those who meet certain requirements. For example, this aid, plus the Bono Joven, cannot exceed 75% of the rent. I would like to recall that with the previous State Housing Plan 2018-2021, around 530,000 actions were carried out that have protected families, young people and different groups in need who have lived a much more dignified life in these last two years.

What we will also do is to complement this, as I said before, with the financing of private insurance to cover young people and vulnerable families, which will guarantee any possible non-payment of rent for up to one year, thus providing security to homeowners and consequently ensuring the maintenance of supply, which is essential to stimulate the housing market among young people.

Fourthly, as the minister said earlier, the affordable rental housing plan is going to increase by up to 100,000 homes. This is one of the main deficits we have had over the last few years: either a lot of public assets have been written off, or there have been public institutions that have not made a clear commitment to having public assets in the form of housing. What we are doing here is to increase the public stock of affordable housing to 100,000 homes through two mechanisms that I would like to share with all of you: firstly, the Public Social Housing Stock and, secondly, the Social Housing Fund.

It established that 30% of the housing, as Raquel Sánchez mentioned, promoted through any of the lines of this plan, should be destined for you, i.e., for young people between 18 and 35 years old. And finally, tax incentives for renting are envisaged on the other side, on the supply side, not only on the demand side, but also on the supply side, to encourage renting in stressed areas. What we want to do is to stimulate the rental of affordable housing and any housing plan has to start by encouraging the majority of the existing housing stock to be used. And this is one of the fundamental pillars of this new state plan. In other words, we will create tax incentives to encourage landlords to increase the supply and, consequently, increase the possibilities for young people to become independent. I believe that any housing plan must start from this stimulus.

Sixthly, I would also like to emphasise that support for young people in owning a home is going to be extended. Not only do we want to talk about renting, but we also want to encourage ownership. Moreover, in a country where we like to own our own homes, no matter how old you are, we want to own our own homes and we want to do so in all types of municipalities, whether they are large municipalities or small municipalities, because there are many people who like to live in the place where they were born or where their mothers and fathers were born. And therefore, to fight against one of the main challenges we face, which is depopulation, the demographic challenge. And I must also tell you that this measure has had a very important impact in some areas in the last two years that we have been implementing it and, for this reason, we want to extend it to municipalities whose resident population is equal to or fewer than 10,000 inhabitants. Therefore, we want to promote this culture of ownership not only in the larger municipalities, but also, why not, to extend it to fight against this common challenge facing our country. Whatever the territory we are talking about, it is particularly linked to the demographic challenge.

Finally, I would also like to tell you that there is going to be direct aid for access to permanent housing. This was explained by the minister at yesterday's press conference. It seems to me that this is one of the important innovations, which clearly connects with the new culture led by young people in cooperatives, in cohousing developments, which are also aimed primarily at you, young people, and, why not say it, also at older people. Because these accommodation models, as you know very well, are growing with great intensity in many countries. We also want to encourage it here, in our country, and these are usually intergenerational cooperative developments, with a clear vocation for social integration.

I think it is clear that the priority solution to the housing problem in Spain is to stimulate renting, without undermining house buying by any generation. But the policies aimed, as I said before, at buying houses are not going to be left out of the Government's action.

I will therefore conclude with a final thought. What we are doing is deploying a formidable amount of economic resources, trying to cover the whole complex reality of our society, which is materialised and made visible when it comes to accessing housing, by doing several things:

The first is to improve the conditions of access for young people through renting, with special attention on the most vulnerable, both socially and economically. Secondly, we want to facilitate access to housing through other forms of tenure. And thirdly, to encourage the development of limited-price housing developments, aimed primarily at young people in our country.

I believe that the moment in which we find ourselves is vital, because, as we are seeing, the price of housing is rising, logically as a result of the powerful economic recovery that we are experiencing throughout our country. Also because of the need - I would say the urgency - of the demand of our young people to gain their independence at a much earlier age than we are seeing in other parts of Europe. Also because it is urgent, as President Puig said earlier, to build and advance in dignity, in respect for our fellow citizens, whatever their age. And a society that suffers from housing shortages is clearly a precarious society, which deserves to advance in terms of dignity and respect.

I also believe that not only do we have the political will that we are showing here, as President Puig and the minister have said, but that this will is shared, because when we are talking about policies linked to housing, we are talking about co-governance. We have developed it in the area of health, responding to the pandemic, and also in the area of European funds. It should be remembered that 46% of the European funds that will come to Spain over the next three years will be managed directly by the regional governments.

Housing policy is also a policy of co-governance, because, at the end of the day, urban planning is in the hands of the local councils, and it is also in the hands of the regional governments. Within the framework of the state plan, what the Government of Spain does is to set the priorities. For example, by incorporating new vulnerable groups, as the minister referred to earlier, and providing economic resources for this state plan: more than 10 billion euros within the framework of the new state plan that we approved in yesterday's Council of Ministers.

Therefore, we have the political will and we have the funds, we have the General State Budget and we have the European funds, so we are going to respond to this demand for the independence of young people.

And we are also going to do so with one of the criteria that the President of the Generalitat said earlier, which seems to me to be fundamental. New buildings, new constructions, must also respond to the demands of young people for sustainability, energy efficiency, accessibility and adaptability, in short, to this new climatic reality.

I have to tell you that just this morning what I did was to visit the Sant Antoni neighbourhood in the city of Elche, very close to here, where the Ensanche de Alzabares is located, which is a large area of houses in a poor state of repair, in an advanced state of deterioration; and to improve and recover this entire neighbourhood, a project has been underway for years called the Urban Regeneration and Renewal Area of the San Anton neighbourhood, which has already completed one phase and has residents living in the area. This project will consist of 284 renovated homes in the first phase and 55 renovated homes in the second phase. In total, we are talking about 339 houses, therefore 339 households. Families who will find a dignified space in which to build their lives, their lives to the fullest.

And it seems to me that for all of us who dedicate ourselves to public service, to be able to see and touch the results of all this public commitment deployed by the different institutions is absolutely extraordinary. And I would like to congratulate Elche City Council, of course, as well as the Government of the Generalitat, dear President and Vice-President, and of course the whole team at the Ministry of Housing, which is also making this possible thanks to their work and commitment.

I conclude by saying that we have to design a new urbanism. I would also like to highlight what we approved yesterday, which is the new Law on the Quality of Architecture, a tool to make urban planning and architecture an element of social cohesion, of social and territorial dignity. The aim is to achieve, in short, cities that are much more questioning, much more sustainable, clean cities, cities that are conducive to the independence of young people, in short, cities and towns that are more humane, if you will allow me to use that expression.

Le Corbusier, one of the great architects of the 20th century, used to say, and I will end here, that a house is a machine for living: "The house should be the case of life, the machine of happiness". So when we talk about decent housing, we are not just talking about technical issues, demographic issues, economic issues. We are talking about the very core of a society, a society that we can call home and, with the event we are holding today here in Alicante, presenting the State Housing Plan and the Bono Joven, what we are doing is building that home among all of us.

So thank you very much to the institutions. Thanks also to the young people who are with us; and lets move forwards.

(Transcript edited by the State Secretariat for Communication)

Non official translation