Spain: Tens of thousands protest nationwide housing crisis

c/world · u/MicroWave@lemmy.world · 200 points

**Summary**

Tens of thousands protested across Spain, including 150,000 in Madrid and 100,000 in Barcelona, over a worsening housing crisis fueled by real estate speculation, foreign ownership, and tourism.

Organizers demand rent cuts, more social housing, and the repurposing of vacant properties. Renters face soaring costs, with many spending over 40% of their income on housing.

Protesters accuse landlords and investment funds of profiting while evictions rise.

Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has proposed rent caps and limits on foreign ownership, calling the crisis a “social emergency” needing urgent action.

Comments

u/funkforager@sh.itjust.works · 7 points

Yeah it’s really more that since ten years ago, that the people who have been buying up homes are buying lots.

So the average person gets no house and the rich and corporations own many houses (then rent them out at high costs or sit on them as a private collection like a summer home or portfolio home).

u/dogslayeggs@lemmy.world · 3 points

Rich people and corporations buy up all the houses to rent out to poor people or rich tourists. That creates a shortage of homes that are for sale for normal people to buy. It's a false shortage. Banning corporations and foreign people from owning homes would solve a lot of it. Huge taxes for owning more than 3 homes would probably do the rest.

u/tal@lemmy.today · 6 points

>On the plus side, he said, both parties shared the same fundamental analysis: that Spain has a basic lack of housing.

*rewinds a decade*

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_property_bubble

>In 2013, Raj Badiani, an economist at IHS Global Insight in London, estimated that the value of residential real estate has dropped more than 30 percent since 2007 and that house prices would fall at least 50 percent from the peak by 2015.[10] Alcidi and Gros note; “If construction were to continue at the still relatively high rate of today, the process of absorption of the bubble would take more than 30 years”.[11]

>In the period for 2007-2013, Spanish house prices fell by 37%.[21] Each year almost a million homes were built in Spain, more than in Germany, France, and England combined.[22]

I guess that housing oversupply issue got solved despite Spain's population size being pretty flat since then.