Barcelona, 24 October 2026 – Elías Bendodo, deputy leader of the Partido Popular for coordination with regional and local authorities and local affairs, and the party’s lead candidate in Málaga for the Congress, announced in Barcelona on Saturday that the Partido Popular would focus its campaign for the general election on 29 November housing policy. Bendodo was joined at the event by Juanma Moreno, Xavier García Albiol and Dani Sirera up.
Bendodo blamed the central government led by Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez for an increase in squatting. As evidence, he cited internal party analyses indicating that property prices had risen by 74 per cent and rents by 44 per cent. Bendodo also said that Barcelona province accounted for 46 per cent of squatting cases in Spain. He explicitly presented these statements as political assessments by the Partido Popular.
He described it as an attack on the right to property and accused the government of inaction for ideological reasons. As a political response, Bendodo called for tougher laws against illegal occupation of homes. He said that Xavier García Albiol was introducing a corresponding legislative initiative in Congress. Bendodo did not present any specific provisions of a draft law in Barcelona.
The statement marks another focus of the Partido Popular’s nationwide election strategy, which puts housing, security and administrative efficiency centre stage. The percentage changes and regional distribution of squatting cases cited by Bendodo are party figures; their consistency with official datasets must be checked against official statistics. In public debate, independent institutions and specialist studies regularly point to regional differences and economic factors such as income, housing shortages and interest rates.
Politically, the sharpening of the rhetoric is intended to distinguish the Partido Popular from the approach of Pedro Sánchez’s government and the housing and rental measures it advocates. Whether the Partido Popular’s proposal gains traction in Catalonia and nationwide will also depend on the reliability of the figures presented and the response in urban hotspots such as Barcelona. The parties are expected to continue defining their positions on housing and public safety in the coming weeks; possible legislative initiatives against squatting could attract further attention during the election campaign.
Editor: Phillipe Schmidt-Araguin (Article created with AI assistance).