Demonstrators have returned to the streets in anger over high housing costs with no relief in sight.
Hundreds of thousands of people have marched in cities across Spain to protest against soaring rents and a lack of affordable homes in a country that enjoys Europe’s fastest economic growth and yet suffers from a housing shortage exacerbated by a tourism boom.
The housing crisis across Europe has hit particularly hard in Spain, where there is a strong tradition of home ownership and scant public housing for rent.
Spain’s centre-left government has struggled to find a balance between attracting tourists and keeping rents affordable for average citizens, as short-term rentals have mushroomed in major cities and coastal destinations.
“No matter who governs, we must defend housing rights,” activists shouted on Saturday as they rattled keychains in Madrid, where tens of thousands of protesters marched through the capital’s centre, according to the local tenants’ union.
Average Spanish rents have doubled and house prices swelled by 44 percent over the past decade, data from property website Idealista showed, far outpacing salary growth.
Meanwhile, the supply of rentals has halved since the 2020 pandemic.
Influx of tourists
Spain does not have the public housing that other European nations have invested in to cushion struggling renters from a market that is pricing them out.
Spain is near the bottom end of Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development countries, with public housing for rent making up under 2 percent of all available housing.
The OECD average is 7 percent. In France, it is 14 percent, the UK is 16 percent and the Netherlands is at 34 percent.
“They’re kicking all of us out to make tourist flats,” Margarita Aizpuru, a 65-year-old resident of the popular Lavapies neighbourhood, told the Reuters news agency.
Nearly 100 families living in her block were told by the building’s owners that their rental contracts would not be renewed, she said.
Homeowners associations and experts say that current regulations discourage long-term rentals, and landlords find that renting to tourists or foreigners for days or a couple of months is more profitable and safer.
Spain received a record 94 million tourists in 2024, making it the second most-visited country in the world.
According to official data, only about 120,000 new homes are built in Spain every year – a sixth of the level before the 2008 financial crisis, worsening the already acute supply shortage.