The president of the Spanish Confederation of Hotels and Tourist Accommodation, Jorge Marichal, said on Monday that talent is being lost because ‘people have nowhere to live’ and indicated that the housing problem is one of the main concerns of business owners and affects all sectors. Marichal, who participated in a conference organised by the Spanish Confederation of Business Organisations (CEOE), pointed out that for years there have been problems attracting professionals in many different trades and areas of Spain.
He said that there are professionals who, during the high season and in some destinations such as the Balearics, have to live in caravans or boats, which gives a ‘very poor’ image. ‘We are wasting time, we have to react to this,’ he said in a plea for measures to be taken to end this situation.
The president of the hotel association commented that, at present, 60% of workers’ income goes towards paying their rent, which, added to other problems such as the ‘lack of infrastructure’ or the quality of the roads, causes people to “get tired, have no purpose in life, lose their enthusiasm and hope,‘which leads to stress and psychological problems and, therefore, high rates of absenteeism.’
‘We have been talking about holiday homes for ten years, we have been talking about housing in general for five years,‘ he stressed, adding that he does not know ’what the authorities are waiting for’ to find a solution to this problem.
Marichal stressed that the right to housing ‘comes before everything else’ and that if ‘people have no hope, no home, no roof over their heads, in the end everything else is superfluous’, an issue which, in his opinion, ‘neither the government nor the opposition’ are taking seriously. ‘There must be a single voice, a single national strategic plan to solve this huge problem facing our people. This is not about being liberal, conservative or progressive, this is about being human,’ he said.