Spain announces ban on evictions after protests

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0:43Hello and welcome to NewsHour live from the BBC World Service in London. I'm Rebecca Kesby. When an 87-year-old woman from Madrid was pictured being evicted from her apartment on a stretcher last week, It sparked angry protests about the ongoing housing crisis in Spain. Marie Carmen Abascal, who is actually disabled, had lived in her apartment for more than 70 years but could no longer afford the rent, which had risen from€500 a month in 2018 to well over€2 ,500 now. She was forcibly removed from her home, then taken to a hospital. Well, the story has enraged protesters. People of all ages have been taken to the streets, calling for stronger protections for tenants, and this was the scene in Barcelona last night.

1:40Meanwhile, in the capital, Madrid, hundreds of people have been camped out at the Puerta del Sol square in front of the regional government's headquarters, and from her hospital bed, Mari Carmen sent this message to the crowd on Sunday.

1:57I want what happened to me to be used to make sure it doesn't happen to other people. I want it to lead people to fight, so the unfair laws that allow my eviction to take place can be changed. That's why on Tuesday, Marie Carmen's law must be approved. I would like to be there with you, to be camping with you, fighting with you, but I'm not able to do so. That's why from here, I'm asking you all to be brave. Fight to defend what's yours. Well, today, the Spanish coalition government said it had heard the protesters and announced a plan to ban evictions until 2030. Here's Spain's housing minister, Isabel Rodriguez.

2:44We must ensure that we never see another case like that of Mari Carmen in our country. Spanish society cannot afford this. and this is a cry for help that all political groups represented in the Parliament must heed, and we must put a firm stop to speculation. This is a constitutional mandate. To this end, we're going to extend the social shield until 31st December 2030 and improve all the protective mechanisms put in place by public authorities to prevent evictions and protect everyone. Well, I caught up with the BBC's Guy Hedgeco, who's been covering the protests in the streets of Madrid. he explained what the government is now proposing.

3:24I mean, some quite big headline announcements from the government, including that ban on evictions till 2030. The government has also included, as part of this decree, the automatic renewal of rental contracts, the idea there being to protect tenants from possible abuses by landlords who might want to put the rent up. there's also a sort of clamp down on uh tourist departments short-term tourist departments like airbnbs and also uh on the rental of single rooms which is an area where a lot of people feel there are a lot of abuses on the part of uh of landlords and guy you're obviously in madrid on on the streets for us this evening there's been quite a lot of protests in in the city uh over the the past few days on this issue.

4:16How are the protesters taking the news today? Is it being met favourably by them? Well, I think the reaction is mixed. There's been a lot of noise today down here in Puerto del Sol, which is the central square where several hundred tents have been pitched by protesters who've been occupying that square. I think they're very mistrustful of the political class. So it's going to be difficult for the government to persuade them that all these measures are going to work. But having said that, some of these measures which have been announced are the kinds of measures that we were hearing protesters and activists talk about saying that they wanted these kinds of things to be introduced.

4:55I must ask you about our 87-year-old evictee, Mari Carman. She's become something of a celebrity there in Madrid over the past few days. What's going to happen to her now? Well, she's really the start of all this. Her Her case generated this whole protest movement. As soon as she was evicted, she was taken away to a nearby hospital to undergo tests. She's been in hospital ever since, since last week. But late last night, her lawyers representing her negotiated with the company that evicted her and managed to negotiate her return to her old property where she lived for 70 years until her eviction last week.

5:39So we are expecting her to return to that property and to be able to pay a relatively low rent, we're told. That's what's been negotiated with the company that owns the flat. That's the BBC's Guy Hedgeco in Madrid. Well, one of those who's been at the encampment over the past few days that Guy mentioned is Dario Cota-Bittati. He's spokesperson for the Carabanchal Housing Union in Madrid, and he explained why he was protesting. For us, this royal decree is not actually a victory. Right now we are driven by anger, by exostation regarding this situation and this system. These are mostly temporary containment measures.

6:20And some of them are actually useful as a tool for housing struggle, for housing unionism. But they actually serve an electoral purpose for PSOE and Sumar, which are also the government that brought us to this situation the last eight years. we actually don't want measures of protection against eviction because what we are aiming is to put them all to an end. We are already familiar with these measures about stopping evictions for vulnerable people. Since the pandemic here in Spain, we had a royal decree that supposedly stopped them. But actually, it only stopped one out of four evictions. and we think that a measure to stop evictions is going to be directed this way.

7:09There's Dario Cotabitarte there, one of the protesters. Well, José García Montalvo is Professor of Economics at Pompeo Fabra University in Barcelona and I asked him what he made of the government's plans to ban evictions until 2030. Is it going to solve the housing problem? Well, this is just a short run attempt to resolve one particular situation, but it's not going to be the solution of this problem, which is much more important and has many more dimensions than just this one. So where does this problem come from in the first place? Well, it's basically a problem of supply. We have had a lot of demand of housing due to basically immigration.

7:57We have every year the formation of 250 ,000 families during the last five or six years. But the construction sector is only able to produce 90 ,000 to 100 ,000 houses. And that means that every year we accumulate a large deficit of houses. And so in terms of the construction then, has the rate of construction been reduced? It has been reduced largely since the crisis, since the housing crisis of 2007-2008. So during those years in Spain, we constructed like 14 houses per 1 ,000 inhabitants. And right now, the construction is around two houses per 1 ,000 inhabitants, which is really very, very low.

8:47If you take the average of 11 developed economies, that number is around four houses per 1 ,000 inhabitants. So we have gone down very much. In 2007, the number was outrageous, was crazy, was too high. But right now, the number is very too low. It's really very too low. And that would have coincided with the global financial crash at the same time all of that was going on. Is it connected? That's right. The production of housing has not recovered because many of the companies of the construction and development companies that were broken during the crisis have not recovered. They disappear. And therefore, we have less companies, construction companies.

9:34We have also a problem of labor supply. We don't have enough people for the construction sector. We have also problems of the cost of land, the cost of materials, and the very lengthy processes to get a license to construct and all the bureaucracy associated with the construction of houses. So housing is an issue for a lot of countries, not just Spain. And I wonder if you could sort of unpack some of the issues with it, because, I mean, is it that there isn't enough housing or that there's not enough housing in the right places? The issue is not a general issue in Spain, like in any other country.

10:12I mean, basically the problem is located in large cities, metropolitan areas and touristic places. So there is where people want to live. And there is where we don't have houses. We may have some empty houses in other places, but not in Barcelona or in Madrid. The proportion of empty houses is very, very low. And the same happens in the large cities around the world, San Francisco or New York or London. I mean, the good jobs are in the large cities. The unemployment rate is very low in the large cities. Productivity is high in large cities and metropolitan areas. You have a scale economy. You have a scope economy.

10:51You have innovation. so everybody wants to live there, everybody wants to live in these metropolitan areas and therefore what you need is houses in those particular areas. So empty houses in rural areas are not going to be the solution for this problem. Yeah, I suppose there is an argument though that you can't just keep building ever bigger cities. Maybe it is time that the government also focused on job creation outside of the bigger cities. Right, but that is a decision that is not the government to take. It's the decision of companies to locate. And what we've seen during the last years is that companies want to locate in the cities and the metropolitan areas.

11:37I mean, companies want to be there and therefore companies bring the jobs with them. I mean, the big problem in Spain is also that productivity in general is low and therefore salaries don't grow at the same pace as rentals. And obviously, since there is such a large demand, a low supply, so rentals, the price of rental is growing quite fast compared with salaries. But in the short term, at least, is this a step in the right direction? I mean, the government said today that more than 5 million people will be helped by this ban on evictions until 2030. Right. So this ban is going to help the people that have already a rental unit.

12:21The problem is what happens with the people that want a rental unit? And what is the impact that this measure is going to have on the supply of rental units? Is this going to reduce the number of units in the rental market or reduce the growth rate of those units when the demand is exponential? If that is the impact, then you're going to help some people, but you're going to hurt some people that won't be able to get into the market. And your view is the best solution is to build. That solution is a very sort of solution that if you have to adopt that solution, at the same time, you need to adopt policies to increase very fast the number of units in the rental market, to produce more units in the rental market.

13:10And we are seeing one part of the solution, but not the other part. Professor José García Montalvo there, Professor of Economics at Pompeo Fabra University in Barcelona.

13:40Coming up later in the programme, we're going to be hearing from the lawyer of Douglas Stuart Carter, a man who's just been released from prison having spent the past 41 years on death row. I think for today the first thing he wanted to do was to get up and just you know take a shower for himself. That's just not something he's been allowed to do for 41 years. So Doug does not have a lot of hopes and dreams and ambitions. He is going to take it day by day which honestly I think is the right call. We're all we're all there for him. More on that to come are headlines this hour. Donald Trump has ruled out any sort of joint venture with China in artificial intelligence, saying it would amount to giving away secrets to America's main economic rival.

14:25And in a decision with far-reaching consequences for English football, the Premier League has confirmed that Manchester City has been found guilty of breaching financial rules and accused the club of arranging sham contracts. This is Rebecca Kesby with NewsHour live from the BBC. Now, Jack Smith was the US special counsel who twice charged President Trump with criminal offences after Mr Trump's first term. Today, it was Mr Smith who was answering questions as he attended a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Here's a taste of what he told senators. Our investigation developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in serious crimes against our nation.

15:13While Andrew Goudswood of Reuters was monitoring events, and I asked him to remind us first of who Jack Smith is and why he was investigating President Trump in the first place. Jack Smith was appointed in 2022 to conduct two investigations into President Trump. One into his attempts to overturn the 2020 election, which he lost to Joe Biden. And then a second investigation into allegations that he, that President Trump had mishandled classified information after his first term in office. OK, so he was making this appearance today and he had some pretty interesting things to say. What can you tell us?

15:53Yes. So he was facing questions from Republicans and Democrats in the Senate Judiciary Committee. And Republicans and President Trump have long been claiming that Smith's investigation was partisan, that it was aimed at the political opposition. And as part of this, they've cited the fact that Smith and his team subpoenaed phone records from a number of Republican senators, including some who are in the committee room today. and they pressed Smith on these claims. And Smith really defended his investigation, said that he followed Justice Department policy, said that politics played no role in his investigation and said that he would indict the same cases today regardless of whether or not President Trump was a Democrat or a Republican.

16:37Well, he also said that his investigation had uncovered proof beyond reasonable doubt, he said, that Mr Trump had engaged in serious crimes against the United States. Yes, he did. And he was not able to bring those cases to trial because when Trump won the 2024 election, Smith dropped both of those cases because there's a Justice Department policy that sitting presidents cannot be prosecuted. And so he wasn't able to bring those cases ultimately to trial. But this was sort of his chance today, speaking to the Senate, to talk about the evidence that he and his team had collected and to explain really why he brought these unprecedented cases against President Trump.

17:16There was a strange line of questioning, apparently, from Senator Eric Schmidt. I think he's a Republican. What was that about? Yes. So Schmidt is a Republican and a Trump ally. And, you know, kind of the back story here is that Republicans have long been claiming that the four cases that Trump faced during his time out of office, including the two that Smith brought and two that were brought by local prosecutors, were kind of one coordinated effort among Democrats to target President Trump. And so he got these text messages that he said showed that Smith had attended an Atlanta Hawks professional basketball game back in February of 2024.

17:56And the reason why he felt that was significant is because Atlanta is where one of the local prosecutors, Fannie Willis, who brought another case against Trump, was based. And so he seemed to be trying to set up a claim that Smith might have been down in Atlanta meeting with her, coordinating about the prosecution. But it kind of backfired on Eric Schmidt because Smith said that he didn't recall attending this game. And it turned out, and Smith's telling, that he had attended a college basketball game, not a professional game between Iowa and the University of Maryland. And the Iowa basketball team, the nickname is the Hawkeyes.

18:33So it seemed that there was maybe some confusion about what was going on there. and it led one of the Democrats to tell Schmidt that he should apologise for basically accusing Jack Schmidt of lying. Andrew Goudsworth there of Reuters News Agency.

18:51Now a month on from the glacial collapse on the Nepalese-Tibetan border, 6 ,000 people are still unaccounted for. The event caused catastrophic landslides and floods that killed at least 1 ,400 people within minutes as water, mud and ice swept down the mountainsides into the valleys. Thousands of homes were wiped out and local infrastructure was destroyed. Well, Nepal is one of the most climate-vulnerable countries in the world and as it slowly tries to rebuild from this recent disaster, experts warn there could be others with the changing climate making the landscape increasingly unstable. Antonia Bolingbroke-Kent reports now from one village facing that challenge.

19:38In a thousand-year-old Buddhist monastery in the remote village of Halji, high in the Himalayas, a monk recites prayers to protect the community. It takes hours and is done daily. And in recent years, those prayers have been needed. There's three things that could happen at any time. First, there are these massive boulders which you see there in the valley. They fall from this side of the mountain and could hit the village at any time. Then over there to the south, there's been recent landslides just beyond the school in the Kanali River. If one comes down and blocks the river, it will flood the valley.

20:16And three, there is the threat from these glacial lakes in the mountains that might cause a flood at any time. So to live here is, in a way, to live in a state of constant fear. Paljo is the headman of Halji, a village of 70 stone houses at the mouth of a green valley. He gazes at the river that plunges down from 5 ,000 metre peaks and flows right past the village. High above, glaciers have melted, creating glacial lakes. When they burst, they can send a torrent of water and rock down the river valley. In 2011, parts of the village were swept away, and last year a neighbouring community got hit.

20:54They've seen the footage of the recent devastating floods in central Nepal and know something similar could happen here. Given all these dangers, where do you stay? What keeps you in Halji? One is that we don't have the financial resources to move. And the second is the monastery. We rely on it. Because we don't get a lot of support from the state around here, if people get sick, need help, or even when there is a natural disaster, people just go and pray at the monastery. We believe that will save us. If you look at those mountain corridors, Halji or Limi Valley, None of them are safe now. Arun Shrestha is one of Nepal's top glaciologists.

21:36He says that as temperatures rise, the Himalayan landscape is changing and becoming more unstable. The recent Rasuwa floods, which killed thousands, are an example of what can happen. And it's not an isolated incident. Because of rapid melting, reduced cryosphere can also create disasters like glacier lake outburst flood, rock ice collapse, avalanches of ice and snow, landslides. The frequency, magnitude of hazards are increasing. It's not just rushes, it's almost everywhere. As a result, the government in Nepal says it wants reparations for the impacts of climate change. Tashi Lazom is a 26-year-old climate activist who's now a prominent member of the governing party in Nepal.

22:23And she's from Halji. Now the floods are becoming recurring issues in the Himalayas and now people distrust the landscape that they love so much. You know, you never know when you're going to get hit. Everything that you know of gets gone just like that, like you never exist.

22:42Back in Hauji, the villagers know the dangers, but to leave is not just to give up a house. They're among the last speakers of the Limi Khe language, an archaic form of Tibetan. For some, like 65-year-old Chiring, Leaving means abandoning a faith and a culture they've protected for a thousand years. We've all been talking about the floods. We grandmothers have decided that we will never leave. So the only thing we can do is to try and be a better person than we were yesterday and pray at the monastery and do our rituals. But we know that one day there will be a big flood, a big landslide, and that is how it will end for us.

23:26Antonio Bolingbroke-Kent with that report and you can catch the full thing on this week's documentary Nepal in the shadow of a glacier here on the BBC World Service.

23:40Welcome back to NewsHour. Now to a story about fat dogs that's gone viral, first in India and now it seems worldwide. Delhi has a problem with stray dogs. There are thought to be about one million in the city. Some are lucky enough to have been unofficially adopted by local communities, but many others struggle to find enough food and do need help from animal charities and volunteers. To raise awareness, Arundhati Patak, who's a journalism student at Delhi University, set up a competition online to vote for your favourite fat dog. She's been telling me about it. I moved to Delhi two years ago for college and the idea came after I kept seeing all these dogs that were looked after by neighbourhoods and people knew these dogs on a name basis.

24:30And that was quite a cultural shock to me because I had not seen that before. Well, it's very sweet. So tell us about the competition then. Right. So me and my friend, we had this idea. We were inspired from Twitter. People on Twitter, they do the same thing that we did with dogs with their mutual followers. They decide a winner in the same exact format. And once I had enough reach, I thought, why not do this so that people could engage with it? And, you know, so that I could build a sense of community as well as awareness for these dogs amongst people. And then it really took off, didn't it? It really did.

25:11I did not expect it to go up to this extent. For the competition, we asked for 64 participants. And then we got way more than that, but we selected the first 64 entries that we got. And as soon as we posted about it, we went from 1 ,500 followers to 90 ,000 followers right now in a matter of a week. Wow. So obviously the dogs are popular. But I mean, I know that some animal lovers have been a little bit concerned because some of the dogs really are too fat, aren't they? I do get these comments a lot, but people overfeeding their pets is a problem. And we do not want to promote that in any way.

25:55But a lot of the dogs that we post, they're street dogs. So there is no way to exactly track their caloric intake or look after how much activity they're getting in. So hopefully with this page and this competition, we're trying to find sponsorships as well as spread awareness about what to actually feed dogs. because there are a lot of brands that sell treats exactly for dogs. And there are also a lot of individuals as well as NGOs that are feeding these dogs. So you've got these 90 ,000 followers now at least and growing. And perhaps now is your opportunity to try and educate your followers?

26:33Yes, that's exactly what we're trying to do. Because we have gained so many followers, a lot of these people are people running NGOs as well as people working in animal welfare as well. So we're trying to connect with as many of them as possible. Indian student Arundhati Patak there, and she's hoping to encourage fit dogs, not fat dogs, on the streets of Delhi. And the winner of the competition will be announced on the 1st of October. And some of those pictures really are very sweet indeed.