What Ricardo Robles could not or did not want to explain – Observer

It is impossible not to admire the salvage work that Ricardo Robles did in the building, in poor condition, that he bought with his sister in 2014 in the hyper-tourist area of ​​Alfama . There is a before and after that highlights the merits of this transformation. This is yet another example of the difference between old Lisbon and Lisbon real estate investors or, translating the figures that have marked the day, from the difference between 300 thousand and almost 6 million euros.

Only Ricardo Robles was up to today, better known as the Lisbon city councilor who criticized the carousel of speculation in which the city has plummeted – with the purchase and sale real estate to fuel the rental business and destroy the affordable housing market. The politician who publicly and insistently criticized what we knew now was preparing to do in personal life.

There is no need to be very creative to imagine the cold environment that had to be felt at the Bloc headquarters. left when the title of the business paper began to circulate and realized that the country was going to spend the day discussing the consistency of politicians, this time because of a star of the house

C & # 39; was there, in the late afternoon a day that had to be very hard, that Ricardo Robles was sitting alone with a secretary and spent half an hour to explain it again to reporters. It was also clear that there is a problem to weigh in the counselor's conscience and that, ultimately, therefore, has not clarified some doubts. For example, was the main motivation for the acquisition of property to social security, even to find a place for the sister to live on her return to Portugal, or did she enter the rental sector in Lisbon? Assuming that, in the original plans, the remaining places not occupied by the sister would be rented, this transaction would be made at "affordable" prices or at market prices.

? When the situation changed and the decision was made to sell the building – and believing that Ricardo Robles did not make the acquisition while thinking about capital gains – why did you choose an agency? real estate dedicated to the transaction of luxury real estate? What did you think of the price offered by Sotheby's? (To reporters, Robles declined to "value the value of justice")

And what would have happened if, during the six months that the building was on the market, a foreign investor had paid the proposed price? Admitting, as he admitted, that the potential buyer would be free to do what he wanted, Robles or would not he risk, though indirectly, add to even more problems than it usually denounces?

Finally, to invest one million to sell six, was Ricardo Robles a temporary real estate speculator during the 6 months of the sale of the building? Without answering this question ("the sale did not materialize"), the advisor presented to the press the new economic model, already free of all sin: horizontal property, off-the-shelf sales and fractions that agree on the rental market. The solution, prepared at the last minute by the same Robles who had guaranteed the day before that the building was really for sale, allowed him to say in the end that he was not resigning because he was still acting consistently and that there was "nothing wrong" in

But if so, why were you alone all day? Why did not anyone from the Bloc seem to defend him from the very beginning? Because Robles (plus its potential millions) has become a toxic asset whose behavior, even though it's perfectly legitimate, has burned the talk of a party that stands above the mud where the swimmers swim. rich, speculators or capitalists. Being one of theirs to make sure that voters are wary – again – of the consistency of politicians, is to take the left block in this mud puddle that the party uses to spoil the others.