Tens of thousands of Europeans took to the streets in 40 cities across the country on Saturday to rally cover debate.
” Cover should be a right, not a resource for speculation”, opposition organizers said.
” But, investment funds and landowners continue to accumulate profits while thousands of people are evicted, displaced from their suburbs, or forced to live in brutal conditions”.
Media reports said around 150, 000 activists showed up in Madrid, while opposition organizers claimed another 100, 000 persons turned out in Barcelona.
The organizers — a collection of tenants ‘ rights and left-leaning organizations — criticise the government of turning cover “into a company model”.
The opposition, which took place under the motto,” This Stop the Enclosure Company”, focused on Spain’s cover crisis, with organizers demanding forced book reductions, expropriation and the creation of more social housing.
” Exhorbitant prices”, they write, “are the main cause of poverty of the working group and a challenge to accessing cover”. They accuse a small majority of house owners of” suffocating a big part of society”.
Spain’s story of real estate speculation and its absence of completed affordable cover over the past century have caused prices to increase during that period.
European ownership of properties and hospitality have supercharged the issue. As commerce explodes across Spain, citizens in Barcelona, Madrid, Malaga, Mallorca and Valencia have been priced out of the business by customers and the real estate merchants catering to them.
Prices in Barcelona, for example, have increased 60 per share in just the past five years. The area has then decided to phase-out all short-term apartment leasing permissions by 2028.
Spanish spending over 40 per share of money on rent only
Spain’s state estimates it needs to build at least 600, 000 new rooms to get a handle on what it calls” a social emergency”. In 2024, 100, 000 new houses were completed.
But organizers like Gonzalo Alvarez of the Tenants ‘ Syndicate ( Sindicato de Inquilinas e Inquilinos ) said” there is a lack of housing because homes are being hijacked — on the one hand tourist flats, and on the other hand all the empty flats belonging to vulture funds and the banks. So there’s no need to develop more, it’s not necessary”.
Situations in which investors allow apartments to fall into disrepair to oust renters has become a common concern, meaning that some tenants are forced to live in filthy conditions because landlords refuse to sustain properties with an attention to increasing prices down the road.
Spain’s Central Bank recently reported that 40 per cent of landlords spend around 40 per cent of their total money on accommodation. And despite pay rising by 20 per share over the past 10 years, these have failed to keep pace with increasing prices. This has made housing the number one priority occupying Hispanic voters.
Critics of the protest movement see methods like the threat of book hits as hostile and escalatory, accusing organizers of being radical leftists opposed to the idea of private property rights while masquerading under the pretext of supporting cover capital.
Spain’s Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has imposed rent caps as well as proposing bans and/or so-called 100 per cent supertaxes on foreign property ownership as a way to tackle the problem.
At a recent ribbon-cutting ceremony for social housing units in Sevilla, Sanchez said Spaniards, “want us to act, they want the housing market to operate according to the law of reason, of social justice: they want to insure that vulture funds and speculators are not doing whatever they like”.
On Saturday, tenants amplified their calls for slashing rents, the revamping of 3.8 million vacant homes, the banning of eviction companies and the establishment of eviction protections for those who have no alternative housing.
