Isabel Rodríguez, from the La Moncloa press room to manage the key Housing area

Patricia Crespo

Madrid, Nov 20 (EFE).- Isabel Rodríguez, the new Minister of Housing and Urban Agenda, has been the face of the Government for the last two years, in which she has served as spokesperson but also as Minister of Territorial Policy.

He leaves the press room of La Moncloa to take on, in the new Executive announced today, the area of ​​Housing and Urban Agenda, key for the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, who focused part of the electoral campaign of last 23J on proposals for expand the public housing stock with the aim of reaching 20% ​​in Spain.

Rodríguez (Ciudad Real, 1981) was the youngest senator in the history of Spain, a chamber she arrived in 2004. She was also general secretary of the Socialist Youth in Ciudad Real from 2005 to 2008.

After passing through the Government of Castilla-La Mancha, where she was general director of Youth and spokesperson, she was elected mayor of Puertollano in 2019, until 2021 when she joined Pedro Sánchez's Cabinet. In the same year she also became part of the Federal Executive Commission of the PSOE, in the 40th Congress of the Socialists.

From her time as mayor, her closeness to the citizens is remembered, a trait of her character that was what Sánchez wanted to incorporate into her Executive when he took her to La Moncloa as spokesperson.

Deputy in several legislatures, she was one of the six ministers who participated in Barcelona at the dialogue table with the Generalitat of Catalonia in 2021.

Rodríguez has always said that she learned a lot from the former president of Castilla-La Mancha José María Barreda, who was the one who hired her as spokesperson for his Executive.

The new Minister of Housing and Urban Agenda was also spokesperson for Susana Díaz in the PSOE primaries in which the Andalusian faced Sánchez.

The new government of Pedro Sánchez thus recovers the Ministry of Housing, a portfolio that was created for the first time in 1957 and that was recovered in 2004 by the socialist José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, who decided to eliminate it six and a half years later, in the midst of the economic crisis after the bursting of the real estate bubble.

With this new assignment, Isabel Rodríguez joins three other women who have already held the position of Minister of Housing: María Antonia Trujillo, Carme Chacón and Beatriz Corredor.

In a context marked by the recent increases in interest rates, which have caused an increase in the cost of financing and drastic falls in sales and mortgages granted, together with the high prices of rents and homes for sale in the main Spanish cities, there are many challenges that lie ahead at the head of the Ministry to improve access to housing, mainly for young people.

Developing what is still pending in the Housing Law, such as the reference index to limit rentals in stressed areas, increasing the stock destined for affordable rentals or promoting rehabilitation are some of the main axes in this matter for this legislature. EFE

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