Tens of thousands of Spaniards went down to the streets on Saturday in 40 cities in the country to protest against speculation on housing.
“Housing should be a right, not a goods for speculation,” said the protest organizers.
“However, investment funds and owners continue to accumulate profits while thousands of people are expelled, moved from their neighborhoods or forced to live in inhuman conditions.”
The media indicated that around 150,000 demonstrators presented themselves in Madrid, while the demonstration organizers said that 100,000 other people have proven in Barcelona.
The organizers – a collection of rights of tenants and left -wing organizations – accuse the government of transforming housing “into a commercial model”.
The demonstration, which took place under the motto, “end, let’s finish housing”, focused on the Spanish housing crisis, the organizers demanding reductions in forced rent, expropriation and the creation of more social housing.
“The exorbitant rents”, they write, “are the main cause of the impoverishment of the working class and an obstacle to access to housing.” They accuse a small minority of owners of “suffocation of a large part of society”.
The history of real estate speculation of Spain and its lack of affordable housing completed in the past decade have doubled the rents during this period.
The foreign property of properties and tourism has the problem. While tourism explodes through Spain, the inhabitants of Barcelona, Madrid, Malaga, Mallorca and Valence were sheltered from the market by visitors and real estate speculators that deal with them.
Rents in Barcelona, for example, have increased by 60% in the past five years only. The city has now decided to eliminate all short -term apartments’ rental licenses by 2028.
The Spaniards spend more than 40% of income for rent alone
The Spanish government estimates that it must build at least 600,000 new apartments to master what it calls “a social emergency”. In 2024, 100,000 new houses were completed.
But organizers like Gonzalo Alvarez of the tenants’ union (Sandicato de survey of inhilinos) said: “There is a lack of housing because the houses are diverted – on the one hand of tourist apartments, and therefore there is no need more and more, it is not necessary.”
The cases in which investors allow apartments to fall into ruins to expel the tenants have become a common problem, which means that many tenants are forced to live in sordid conditions because the owners refuse to maintain properties in the eye of the increase in downward prices.
The Central Bank of Spain recently declared that 40% of tenants spend about 40% of their total income for housing. And despite 20% wages in the past 10 years, they have failed to keep up with the pace of doubling rents. This has made accommodation the number one concern occupying Spanish voters.
Opponents of the protest movement see measures such as the threat of rent as hostile and climbing, accusing the organizers of being radical leftists opposed to the idea of private property while pretending to support it housing actions.
The Spanish Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez imposed rent ceilings as well as 100% 100% 100% for foreign property to solve the problem.
During a recent ribbon cup ceremony for social housing units in Seville, Sanchez said that the Spaniards, “want us to attack, they want the housing market to work according to the law of reason, social justice: they want to make sure that the funds and speculators of vulture do not do what they want.”
On Saturday, the tenants amplified their calls for the reduction of rents, the overhaul of 3.8 million vacant houses, the ban on expulsion companies and the creation of expulsion protections for those who have no alternative housing.
Published by: Jenipher Camino Gonzalez and Zac Crellin
