“We must stop the purchase of housing by the wealthy. The middle class is being robbed

—Young people are showing total fury against Vox.

— Because there are several generations who have never had any prospect of prosperity and who have one crisis after another. They can’t own a house and stabilize. For decades, we have been the first country in Europe to experience youth unemployment. There is a cultural crisis because people do not recognize the environments in which they live. And depopulation, because many provincial residents had to leave their homes to share space in the big city.

—What happened to the left?

— He betrayed the hopes of many young people. With 15-M, he waved the flag of material justice when for many it seemed like there was no future. Since then, the left has been in power for a long time and has disappointed all the expectations raised. Those who came today to denounce caste are part of caste.

— And in the meantime, Vox is heading towards the working-class neighborhoods.

—Vox can take the votes of anyone because it is about questioning the general frameworks of politics. Many people believed that the left would give them a material basis for a dignified existence. But the left has forgotten it. Now she likes frivolities. He has language that seems obscure and talks about things that interest the academic elite or the podcast world, but is completely foreign to reality. It makes sense that in neighborhoods where once the most important thing was to have a house, a stable job and a car for the family; and now the left is telling you that a scooter is better and that having a house is a bit old fashioned and that starting a family is not… Well, not only has he disappointed his former constituent, he also despises him.

— Let’s talk about housing. He advocates that it be proprietary, popular and affordable.

— Well, it’s what allowed millions of Spaniards to take a quantum leap in their status and be able to offer their children a future they never imagined. Owning your own home is the main achievement of the working classes in Spain. Thanks to this, you will be able to save, travel, start a business and give your children a good education. You always lived in the same house, you had the same neighborhood, the same friends and the same school. All this is disappearing. We have destroyed the possibilities of popular access to property ownership.

—And how do they recover?

— Realize that what works in the home must be maintained. And what we know is not, we must reject it. In this country, political methods such as price controls were chosen and construction was stopped. Social housing has been abandoned.

—Well, a lot of things were built in Spain.

— 17 or 18 years ago. Not since. This year, 90,000 homes were built and 600,000 people entered Spain. I don’t know if there are people who think that the people who arrive come with their purchased house. When you encourage a pull effect by saying that we need hundreds of thousands of workers per year and you don’t care about the conditions in which they will live, that puts a lot of pressure on prices. There are a lot of people looking for homes and very few homes available. The government has promised 184,000 sheltered homes. He didn’t do them. In the 60s more than 200,000 were made per year and in the 80s, Felipe González, more than 100,000. Now there is no more will.

—He is very critical of Ayuso’s model for Madrid. “The new Miami.” Isn’t lowering taxes and attracting foreign investment growth?

“It is a growth that does not benefit the citizens of Madrid. Believing in the global city, with more foreign investors, more festivals, international students… This gives us character. But the truth is that Madrid is growing by 150,000 inhabitants per year and it is the low-income areas where rent prices are increasing the most. At the moment there is a clamp in which the average Madrid resident sees himself imprisoned. We have large foreign buyers, to whom the PP also wanted to grant tax deductions that it denied to the national buyer; and below we see the overcrowding of many people who come from very difficult conditions elsewhere in the world. Ultimately, Spaniards find themselves without the social housing they need because it is not being built, without access to rentals because prices are increasing and without the possibility of purchasing. We want the residents of Aluche, Carabanchel and San Blas to gain access to property.

—Is it incompatible to promote access to property with these investments?

— Well, on the one hand we have a robbed middle class, increasingly removed from the possibility of being able to buy; and on the other, big foreign fortunes who almost seem to have money as punishment and who are very easy to buy. So the taxi drivers are homeless, the waiters, the journalists… But we were going to pay with our taxes so that the one who has 18 houses in the world has another one.

— Should we limit the purchase to these fortunes?

“We believe that we must put an end to the massive purchase of housing by non-resident foreigners with large fortunes and funds. And that there be differentiated taxation whereby those outside pay more and those inside receive bonuses. The liberalism of the PP is à la carte. Well, the principal residence investment deduction has been charged.

—Repeat that the neighborhoods are no longer recognizable.

— This does not mean having a frozen image of neighborhoods in time, but rather that people do not feel like foreigners or tourists. Ownership fixes you. You create roots, you connect with neighbors, your children become friends at school. Right now, it’s difficult to experience these feelings because rental contracts are binding. Small businesses are also disappearing due to population changes. Before there was a printing press or an academy and now a halal butchery or a bachata place. People used to play in the park, now it’s not safe.

— He’s talking about immigration.

— And not just when it comes to immigration. There are environments that resemble a theme park or an outdoor mall.

— He says that the new population has changed the neighborhoods.

— New and not so new. We have been making plasticine borders for over 20 years.

—And is that a problem?

—It’s a problem if a citizen values ​​connections and believes that what defines us is how close we are to our parents, who we are and being part of something. Renting is wonderful for this. Stop having a sense of belonging.

— Do you think there is good and bad immigration? The PP demands that foreigners from Latin America be given priority.

“What I believe is that in Spain, public services are not adapted to the reality of our country. Just go to the metro or health center. Exactly the same thing happens in the real estate market. It would be absurd to consider that in a country where the population lacks so much infrastructure, more people could continue to enter. I find it hard to believe that those who say immigration is an opportunity have ever taken the bus. There exists a cultural, economic and political caste which lives emancipated from the living conditions of the people. It’s difficult to be pro-immigration and advocate lower housing prices. There is more demand and it is not being built. And how will wages rise if we put millions of people willing to work more cheaply?

— You are 34 years old. Can young women understand Vox’s discourse on gender violence?

—I think Vox needs to continue to refine a lot of things. It is a party which has not been present in the institutions for so long, which has suffered continuous torpedoing and tortuous manipulation of the message. There were also some blunders and this should lead us to be more didactic. Because what we are saying is not barbarism, but rather common sense.

—Does the far-right label bother you?

— It doesn’t bother me that a label also turned out to be ineffective. People who consider themselves right-wing and people who don’t vote for Vox, who have very different opinions on the monarchy or religion. We have become hope. Ten years ago, did we have 20 percent far-right people in Spain?

—Well, stoking that fear worked for Sánchez in 2023.

—This strategy of fear no longer works. Nor in other countries. What people are afraid of is that those who brought us here will continue to govern.