Spanish PM Pedro Sánchez attends political rally in Malaga ahead of local elections on 28 May

The PSOE leader used the event to speak about affordable housing plans, the city's bid to host Expo 2027 and also the Junta's contentious irrigation plans for the Doñana national park

Antonio M. Romero

Malaga

Wednesday, 3 May 2023, 10:32

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez returned to Malaga yesterday evening (Tuesday, 2 May) to support local candidate Daniel Pérez in his bid to become mayor of the city at the municipal elections on 28 May.

Seventy nine days after his last visit to the city Sánchez joined around 1,500 people at the NH Hotel and pledged his support for the star proposal of the Socialist candidate for mayor to build 10,000 affordable housing units.

Sánchez said he would provide "all the tools required", through the bad bank of the government, Sareb, to make the promise a reality in the next four years "so that Malaga comes out of the housing emergency that it is experiencing and to help the public".

In addition to the 10,000 new housing units, Perez said he would freeze the licences for tourist housing in blocks of flats and reduce those already granted and implement a tax for large holders who had empty flats in Malaga in a bid to fix the city's housing crisis.

Perez said that the price of housing in Malaga city had risen 67% in eight years, rent had risen 30% in the past year, that in the last municipal mandate, 35,000 Malaga residents had been forced out of the city.

"We have to change this and we are only going to change it if we, the socialists, are in government," he added.

Pérez criticised the sitting PP political party in the city for having "done nothing" to respond to 25,000 applicants for subsidised housing and said "it is not an issue that interests them". He added that the model of the PP was to build "unattainable luxury towers" instead.

PM Sánchez also reiterated his personal and his government's commitment to continue to support Malaga's bid to host Expo 2027. Malaga is competing to host the international event with cities in Argentina (San Carlos de Bariloche), Serbia (Belgrade), Thailand (Phuket) and the United States (Bloomington).

The prime minister also addressed the controversy surrounding the legalisation of irrigation in Doñana, saying it was an example of how the right wing governed: "on the basis of arrogance and climate denialism, just like the ultra-right wing"

He again called on the president of the regional Junta de Andalucía, Juanma Moreno, to withdraw the bill because "Doñana should not be touched".

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