What is Llogateres Union?This is an
organization born five years ago to respond collectively to the housing problem, namely the housing bubble that the family is drowning and that has a savage impact on people. Over the past five years, prices have risen by 30 per cent, but the economic capacity of families has not increased. Our struggle is based on the problems arising from this bubble.

What do we talk about when we talk about bubbles?
Inflation of rental prices. It is not a meteorological phenomenon, but the result of multiannual housing policies. After the 2008 mortgage crisis, thousands of real estate assets went on to serve nothing. The Government of Spain wanted to get rid of it and for that reason it gave international vulture funds, in exchange for a nonsense, at irritating prices. These assets, you know, are homes of thousands of people. On the other hand, they reduced the duration of rental contracts from five to three years, which allowed them to pull you every three years or renew the contract with an 80% increase. We have seen hundreds of such cases.

Is housing a secondary right?Housing can
be understood as a right or as a market good. In Spain, housing policy has always understood housing as a good. It is a failed policy.

Renting is understood as an interim option, the youngest, that of students. Does it have anything to do with it?
State housing policy has understood housing as private property. Moreover, 90% of what was built in public works has gone into the owners’ pockets. But that's not the case everywhere. In Vienna, for example, 40% of the public park is rented and is a stable and safe option. The idea we have here is due to the policies driven over the last few decades. But in Barcelona 60% live for rent, so the property is not an option for the majority. I would have to live four times to buy the cheapest apartment in Barcelona. Living in rent is considered unsafe, because that is the way it is: we want that we can also build a life project for rent, without having to live in a permanent struggle.

In the labor unions, they sought inspiration to organize themselves. Why?
Housing is the main oppression of society today. For many years there has been a lack of decent work, reaching the end of the month. Today, of course, working conditions can be greatly improved, but in some way they are stable. But this doesn't make sense if then 50 percent of the profits go to rent. Trade unions in the world of work have left us a great legacy of struggle. They've been able to organize thousands of people. If there is an oligopoly of large homeowners, let us arrange for the forces to balance. How are you going to negotiate your rental with Blackston, the world’s largest investment fund? If, on the contrary, we join 500 tenants and negotiate with Blackston or say that we are not going to pay, then…

I mean, people are empowered.
People come to the assemblies with a lot of fear and suffering. We live in an increasingly individualistic system and, therefore, we live the structural problems as if they were ours, as if they were our fault. People are empowered when they see that their problem is also of thousands of other people, and that the problem doesn't get enough or that it hasn't been successful in life. He understands that the source of the problem is political and economic and that the only way to stay at home is to fight.

And is there victory?
Fortunately, yes, if not, we would not be here five years later. We have significant victories. The Goldman Sachs fund wanted to increase the rental of more than a hundred homes by 60%. We managed to organize the whole block and finally managed to make the rise 15%. Consequently, people in a similar situation began to repeat this model.

In a referendum they have just accepted the eviction of the large homeowners in Berlin. Is it a model for you?
Of course. The referendum has been an impressive democratic exercise and has put on the table a taboo on what to do to limit the profits of speculators who have done everything they want for decades. Here, too, there are tools to limit the privileges and speculation of vulture funds. We must act with imagination.

The Spanish Government has just announced a youth aid bonus.
This bonus would affect 1% of young people. Everything is said. The Government of Spain has a historic opportunity to legislate the first housing in the last 30 years and guarantee the right to housing. There are many organisations that are making proposals for this. But unfortunately we are not the only ones who are working to convince people; the real estate lobby has a lot of resources for ministers to be called on the phone the day. What's going to happen? It depends to a large extent on those aspects that can support the Government ' s budgets.

And in the hands of those who fight, seguramente.En
we fight the street every day, kicking, so they don't throw the neighbor down. We are stopping evictions every day.