Gaza, decent housing and the future of our democracies

We're closing out an intense political year, filled with turbulence and major challenges. But there are two fundamental issues that will shape the future of Spain and the future of the world: housing and Gaza.

Citizens are asking how it is possible that politics is ineffective in guaranteeing such a basic right as the right to decent housing, and how it is possible that the international community fails to stop a genocide taking place before our eyes.

Both conflicts are two sides of the same coin: the confrontation between those above and those below.

Housing is today the main factor in inequality and has risen to the top of citizens' concerns. Thousands of young people and working-class families find themselves unable to access decent housing due to skyrocketing prices. Without a clear solution, new generations will live worse than previous ones; we cannot allow this.

We believe that both the Spanish government and the Generalitat have left-wing majorities to push for these changes. It has been proven that when there's a will, there's a way. Like when Catalunya Comuns, ERC, the CUP, and the PSC reached an agreement to end the seasonal rental fraud. This is the way forward: agreements within the institutions and citizen pressure in the streets. Guaranteeing access to housing means ensuring freedom, equality, and a future for everyone.

Despite this progress, we must go further. The 2026 budget must be an opportunity to give new impetus to policies that guarantee the right to housing. In the negotiations, we will demand that the Catalan government, first and foremost, comply with the current agreements. A corps of inspectors still needs to be deployed to enforce the sanctioning regime for those who violate housing laws, which is why we also need a registry of large landowners and unity against evictions. We will continue to place the country's priorities at the center of the negotiations: the right to housing and a solution to dignify Rodalies.

The second major battle is Gaza and the rights of the Palestinian people. For months, we have witnessed in horror the genocide perpetrated by the Netanyahu government, with the complicity and passivity of the Western powers. The bombing of hospitals and schools, and now the hunger, are a deliberate strategy to annihilate the Palestinian people. Faced with this barbarity, Catalan and European civil society has mobilized, demanding an arms embargo, the severing of institutional relations between governments, and the dismantling of the trade agreement between the EU and Israel.

And despite the cowardice of too many European governments that continue to turn a blind eye to barbarism, significant milestones have been achieved here in Spain, which we Comuns have been pushing for at all institutional levels: such as the promotion of an arms embargo on Israel, the severance of institutional relations with the Israeli government promoted by the Catalan Parliament and Barcelona City Council, or the closure of the Generalitat office in Tel Aviv.

Despite these advances, the overall response is clearly insufficient. That's why the Commons have proposed that the United Nations launch a humanitarian mission to protect the civilian population of Gaza, using force if necessary, to ensure the entry of food and medicine, in the face of a famine that could affect nearly 300,000 people, according to UNRWA.

Housing and Gaza are not separate battles: they are two sides of the same coin. A country that allows investment funds to decide who can stay and who must leave is not a free country. And a Europe that remains silent in the face of genocide has no future. These two realities—access to housing and the barbarity in Gaza—share the same root: the confrontation between those above and those below, between the economic and military interests of the powerful and people's right to a decent life. It forces us to choose which side we want to be on.

Now it's time to choose. And we're clear about it: with the people, and against speculation and barbarism.