Vox hangs posters in the Madrid Metro to spread the hoax that immigrants take rent aid

Vox once again uses electoral posters in the Madrid Metro to spread hoaxes against migrants. This time, the stations of Madrid Sur have ads that charge against immigrants, who, according to the far-right party, take rental aid from the Community of Madrid, taking advantage of the concern caused by the increase in the price of housing, especially in the capital.

Just a few days before the elections, the group led by Rocío Monasterio in the autonomous community has once again singled out people from other countries. It is not the first time that the party led by Santiago Abascal in a national key spreads the hoax that immigrants receive more aid than people born in Spain, despite the fact that it has been denied on more than one occasion.

Now, those from Monasterio are more specific: not only do they “take aid” for them, but they specifically grant them subsidies to rent a house, while “the people of Madrid allocate 57% of their salary to pay the rent.”

The electoral poster uses to support its hypothesis a part of a list in which names like “Mustapha” or “Youssef” appear. But the document they use is not the definitive one, it is a provisional list arranged alphabetically, with which the first surnames that appear begin with “AA”, like a good part of surnames of Arab origin. In addition, they ignore the rest of those admitted provisionally with multiple different surnames incorporated into the final list, of 62 pages.

The Minister for Social Rights and the 2030 Agenda, Ione Belarra, alluded to this: “The resolution has 62 pages, you have put a fifth of a single page in the image. We have to get you out of the institutions ”, she said on Twitter.

As reported by Maldita.es a year before the lists of beneficiaries were published, since 2018 the extreme right has spread this hoax, despite the fact that one of the main requirements is to have Spanish nationality or, for foreigners, to have legal residence in Spain.

And no, a person who was born outside the country does not have more benefits either, but rather these aids are given, above all, based on income, according to their own bases of the call. In fact, most of those admitted to rental aid for the year 2019 are Spanish.

In addition, the formation of the extreme right assumes that each of the surnames of supposed foreign origin correspond to an immigrant person, but does not refer to their real nationality. In fact, one of the first times that Abascal read a list of alleged aid in a rally in 2019, a woman whose last name is “Belghanou” replied: “I am 24, working since I was 16 and contributing since I was 18. I am the daughter of immigrants and yesterday you could have mentioned my last name”. “I have been contributing for more years than you, who are 43 years old,” she added.

Fine for refusing to rent to migrants

Not only is this information false, but also the reality in terms of rent is, on many occasions, very difficult for migrants, not only in the capital. In 2021, the Barcelona City Council fined an owner and a real estate agency for the first time 45,000 euros for refusing to rent their apartment to a migrant.

This has been repeated several times, according to a report by the council itself, which shows the obstacles that these people have to face for the mere fact of having an Arab surname. The Justice, in 2022, also endorsed for the first time the sanction of the City Council for offers in flats that only accepted “Spanish people” as tenants.

Last year, another party’s electoral poster spread another related hoax, this time, with migrant minors. “One ore: 4,700 euros per month. Your grandmother: a pension of 426 euros/month”, they said at the time, despite the fact that no minor under the supervision of the Community received such an amount of money.