Protests Stir All Over Spain Against Mortgage Tax Tribunal Law

Provincial capitals and cities throughout Spain saw rallies, or caceroladas (making lots of noise with pans and cooking implements), and other acts of protest in front of courts and in main squares, to protest against the ruling of the Supreme Court establishing that the mortgage holders, and not banks or financial institutions, pay taxes on official legal documents.

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On Oct. 18, the judiciary ruled on changing laws dictating that banks must pay the taxes due from mortgages and on the legal paperwork associated with them, which implies around a 0.5 percent to 1.5 percent responsbility of the mortgage cost. However, Tuesday, under pressure from banks, the Supreme Court ruled that clients should pay said taxes.

On Thursday, the head of the government President Pedro Sanchez had approved a decree to modify norms regulating the imposition of tax associated with the juridical recording taxes, so that "never again" would clients pay said taxes. This was a response by the government to a ruling by the judiciary that had amended an October ruling to say that clients, and not the banks, must pay the tax when mortgaging a loan.

The Spanish people protested in front of the judiciary offices in Madrid and in several other cities of Spain to demand that banks should pay those taxes. Several banners could be seen, saying: "Why is it the market that rules if I have not voted for it?"

Pablo Iglesias, one of the leaders of the Podemos movement, urged the state to reconsider and rule in favor of the people, not in favor of the banks, uniting his voice to those of the protesters and demanding that the Spanish government pass a law recognizing that banks "owe money to the Spanish people."

"This demonstration must serve to show that the government and other political forces reconsider and understand that it is necessary to pass laws in line with the jurisprudence of the Supreme Court chamber, that they owe the Spanish people money, who have the right to collect," said Iglesias.

Iglesias added that the court's decision is "a shame, an attack on the separation of powers and democracy. It seems that in this country banking is above the law — it cannot be."

In 2016, big banks in Spain evicted nearly 400,000 families suffering from the financial crisis for not being able to pay their mortgages, leaving them homeless, without regard to whether those people were elderly or handicapped. And all the while, the banks sat on 3 million vacant homes.