Spain: Laws to protect those who break the law

PASCUAL SERRANO

The paradox of some supposedly progressive measures by the Spanish government is that they are designed to guarantee rights even if you have previously, personally, broken the law. Let me explain. If a vulnerable family approaches social services or registers on public waiting lists for social housing, it would take years to obtain it, and they would probably never be offered it. Their constitutional right to housing would not be fulfilled.

But if you sign a rental agreement committing to a monthly payment and then default, legislation preventing the eviction of vulnerable tenants will allow you to remain in the property. This is the law that was approved...or in the pandemicThrough a Royal Decree-Law, as part of an emergency package to protect vulnerable people from the social and economic effects of COVID-19, a measure was enacted. This included the suspension of evictions of vulnerable tenants without alternative housing due to non-payment of rent. It has been extended several times since then and is currently being debated and voted on in Parliament. The authorities are not providing these vulnerable families with alternative housing, and only through this mechanism of non-payment can they achieve their constitutional right to housing.

A Moroccan woman who comes to Spain to pick strawberries on a three-month contract with the commitment to return to her country at the end of the contract, if she fulfills that contract and the commitment made, will be living in her Moroccan town after those three months. She will not have residency in Spain, nor any Spanish rights, and of course, she will not be able to access any job offers for Spanish residents. These are known as "contracts of origin." They are temporary contracts, usually for agricultural work, lasting approximately three to six months, in which the worker He commits in writing to return to Morocco.

The pastor January 27th, the Spanish government approved the processing of an extraordinary regularization of immigrants qThis will benefit more than 500.000 people who are undocumented in Spain. Their deportation proceedings will now be suspended, and they could work legally. The only requirement is to prove that they arrived in Spain more than five months ago and have no criminal record.

If any of the women who came under the contracts of origin failed to fulfill their commitment to return to Morocco within two months of completing their work, according to the newly approved regulations, they will be eligible for Spanish residency. They will be able to be rehired in Spain for any job and receive unemployment benefits and social assistance. These are benefits that, as we noted at the beginning, will not be available to those who fulfilled their contracts and returned to Morocco.

From the perspective of social struggles, one could argue that gains have never been achieved through submission, and that rebellion and the rejection of unjust laws and norms have been the driving force behind progress. Strikes, demonstrations, and numerous forms of protest are carried out by breaking the law because it is understood that what is being demanded is of greater value to society and its most vulnerable members than the rules being violated in the process.

But in these cases I've described, there's no rebellion or collective struggle; there's simply personal cunning, people who have circumvented the law for their own benefit and haven't helped to secure any rights for others. To which I have no objection; my criticism is of the system, not of the individuals who use every possible means to survive. It's as if those who hacked the hospital waiting list to get treatment for their health problem were granted amnesty or accepted, without having to wait the two and a half years everyone else endures. Of course, it's fair to demand cataract surgery before two years, but is this how it's achieved, and with the approval of those in power?

The problem is that vulnerable people who can't rent an apartment and stop paying will remain homeless, and foreigners from poor countries who try to obtain a visa at the Spanish consulate to work or who fulfill their commitment to return after a temporary contract will simply fall back into poverty. No social progress is being made; these are just stopgap measures for the opportunists.

Nor is it helpful to say that these options at least allow us to satisfy the needs of some. People. It is a mistake that, in one of the few remaining progressive governments in Europe, in the name of the left and social justice, rights are achieved at the cost of rewarding those who flout the law and punishing those who abide by it. Laws, moreover, passed by the very same people who later reward their violation. That's what happens when you try to have your cake and eat it too. Laws should be created to protect the weak, not so that the weak can get justice when they break them.

The left should think about housing solutions for vulnerable people who do not breach contracts and for foreigners who want to enter our country with papers to work.

Pascual Serrano He is a journalist and writer. His last book is "Forbidden to doubt. The ten weeks in which Ukraine changed the world”