Podemos secretary-general Ione Belarra said on 8 July her party would not back Spain's housing decree, actively or passively, if it grants landlords personal-income-tax (IRPF) deductions for cutting rents1. Junts, the Catalan party whose seven seats the government needs for a 176-vote majority, demands exactly those deductions. One decree now has to satisfy two parties pulling in opposite directions.
The Ministry of Consumer Affairs said the same day it was convinced the decree would pass before the end of August2, which concedes that the July target set on 29 June has slipped. Spain's state gazette, the Boletín Oficial del Estado, carried no decree text on either 8 or 11 July3. Temporada lets, seasonal contracts of nine to eleven months that sit outside standard tenancy protection, stay legally open while the parties argue over who pays.
June rent data cut against the urgency. Idealista put the national average at a record €15.3 per square metre, up 4.2% year on year4. Madrid decelerated to +7.6%, down from the +17.9% recorded to April, even as its absolute price reached €23.7. Barcelona fell 3.9% to €23.0, one of only four Spanish capitals where rents dropped, alongside the cruise-tax and licence stack its mayor built last spring.
Spain's hottest markets are cooling just as the tool meant to cool them stalls on who-pays politics. The Supreme Court voided the national short-term-rental (STR) registry in May, and INE's tourist-housing count has since edged back up, pushing supply toward the temporada channel the decree has not closed. Passed in September, it would be legislating against last year's problem.
