Junts
Junts per Catalunya, the Catalan independentist party, which joined PP and Vox in defeating Spain's rental price-freeze extension on 28 April 2026.
On 13 July 2026 Junts secured landlord tax relief from Sumar as the price of its seven-seat bloc's support for Spain's housing decree, the same leverage it used to help sink the April rent-freeze extension.
Last refreshed: 24 August 2026 · Appears in 1 active topic
Why do Catalan independence politicians keep blocking Spain's housing protection laws?
Timeline for Junts
Rejected elements of the national housing decree
Nomads & Communities: Navarra writes the rule Madrid could notWon landlord IRPF deductions for voluntary rent cuts
Nomads & Communities: Sumar yields landlord break to Juntsdemanded landlord tax deductions
Nomads & Communities: Spain rent decree stalls on party splitSignalled willingness to renegotiate RDL 8/2026 if landlord tax incentives included
Nomads & Communities: Madrid court silent; Bustinduy aims at summer rent freezeMentioned in: Barcelona doubles its cruise day-stop tax
Nomads & CommunitiesBackground
Junts per Catalunya is a Catalan pro-independence party founded by former President Carles Puigdemont in 2020. In the Spanish Congress of Deputies it holds a small but decisive bloc of seats that the PSOE-Sumar Coalition needs to reach a governing majority on non-budgetary legislation.
The party has historically extracted significant concessions from PSOE in exchange for support, including the 2024 amnesty law for Catalan independence leaders, and treats each vote as a transactional negotiation rather than an ideological alignment. Its stated reasoning on national housing measures is that emergency rent caps and equivalent instruments are a competence that belongs to the Catalan government, so a uniform national rule would constrain Catalonia's own legislative space.
That combination, a small but pivotal bloc willing to withhold its vote until specific demands are met, makes Junts a recurring veto point on Spanish housing legislation regardless of the substance of any individual bill.
It keeps trading its vote for concessions
Junts's refusal to back the rent-freeze extension helped defeat it in Congress on 28 April 2026, alongside PP, Vox and an abstaining PNV, with the party framing housing regulation as Catalan competence rather than a national matter . By 8 July, Junts's seven-seat bloc was demanding IRPF landlord tax deductions as its price for the 176 votes the government's housing decree needed, and Podemos's refusal stalled the decree to end-August .
Junts got its concession on 13 July, when Sumar accepted the tax break over Podemos's objections, letting the decree's target move forward to before 31 July . The pattern repeats the April defection almost exactly: Junts withholds support until a concession lands, regardless of which housing measure is on the table.