Can Barcelona Solve One of the Toughest Housing Crises in Europe?

In 33 years, Marga Aguilar has never lost a payment of the rent in her apartment in a modernist -style building in the heart of Barcelona. The owner of the building had always treated her and the other tenants as if they were a family and maintained reasonable rents.

But when the owner recently died, Ms. Aguilar, 62, had a brutal awakening. A Dutch investment background launched to buy the building – called Casa de la Papallona because it is crowned with a mosaic sculpture of a butterfly – with plans to convert the apartments into temporary rents. The tenants received eviction notices, asking them to leave the following month.

“My legs started to fasten,” said Mrs. Aguilar, whose 92 -year -old father had moved with her during the pandemic. “We don’t know where we will go – we cannot afford to live elsewhere.”

Spain is facing a housing crisis that has quickly become one of the most acute in Europe. Since 2015, almost a tenth of the country’s living assets has been torn from investors or converted to tourist rents. Scarcity has contributed to increasing prices much faster than wages, making homes at affordable prices at hand.

The problem is complex, perhaps no more than in Barcelona, ​​which has become zero for the dilemma of the accommodation of Spain – and a crogiolo for the challenges of the attempt to solve it. And with the summer tourist season quickly approaching, the city is facing greater urgency to find solutions.

Despite the efforts to help residents to reach accommodation at affordable prices, investors have found a way to get around the restrictions. While the authorities climb to deal with the scope of the situation, the experts warn that it will take time to shoot a problem that has been in progress years.

“The accommodation must be a right, not a business,” said Salvador Ila, president of Catalonia, the Spanish region that includes Barcelona. “The need to face it is urgent.”

The troubles of Barcelona reflect the pain that the European cities launch: residential properties have been increasingly transformed into financial activities by investors. An increase in global tourism and workers who cross the boundaries has owners who favor short -term rental compared to long -term tenants protected. Cities need multiple houses, but high costs and complex regulations have suffocated the construction. A brisk one lived in social housing to protect families in difficulty has reduced after the governments sold them to collect money.

The problem of economic accessibility has become one of the greatest drivers of inequality in Europe. Rentals in the European Union increased by 20 percent in 10 years and the prices of the houses have increased by half, according to Eurostat. In 2023, one in 10 European Championships spent 40 percent or more of his entrances for housing building.

Hoping to reverse the trend, Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, the executive arm of the European Union, has recently appointed the first commissioner for European housing construction.

In Barcelona, ​​the situation is considered so critical that the mayor, Jaume Collboni, joined his counterparts in 14 other European cities, including Amsterdam, Budapest, Paris and Rome, to solicit Brussels to treat the crisis with the same urgency as the defense of Ukraine.

“Europe is facing a threat to our borders” from the aggression of Russia, said Collboni in an interview with its decorated office overlooking Plaça Sant Jaume in the historic center of Barcelona. “But we are also facing an internal threat, which is increasing inequality due to the lack of affordable accommodation.”

Other European cities have been affected by the housing creaking, but Barcelona was mounted by it. This city kissed by the sun, which boasts the cathedral of the Sagrada Familia and Rambla Promenade, attracts around 15 million tourists per year. Tens of thousands of foreign workers are recently immigrants, strengthening the economy but adding to the tight.

The right to homes is protected in the establishment of Spain. But rents prices increased by 57 % in the country since 2015 and 47 percentage prices, while family income grew only by 33 percent, second PWC. Only in Barcelona, ​​rents increased by 68 percent in a decade.

Mr. Collboni, a socialist politician elected in 2023, quickly moved to apply solutions, starting from the imposition of the limits of rental prices last March. Since then, rents have decreased on average by over 6 percent. After a stormy year in which the angry Spaniards have held mass protests for affordable accommodation, Barcelona will become the first European city to end the licenses for Airbnb HomesBy requesting the owners by 2028 to offer them as long -term accommodation to rents with covers or put them for sale.

“In one fell swoop, Boom: we will put 10,000 apartments on the open market,” said Collboni. “There are almost 25,000 people who will be able to live again in Barcelona.”

In addition, the Government of Catalonia has implemented plans to collaborate with the developers to build 50,000 houses at affordable prices by 2030. It is also pushing to cut the approval times for construction permits in half. “When the market is broken, it is necessary to intervene,” said Ilala.

But housing activists affirm that those measures do nothing to solve an immediate creaking. They are pressing the government, on the other hand, to force the owners and banks that hold non-fulfilling mortgages to put a cache of four million empty houses in Spain-circle 75.000 of them in Barcelona-Da use for long-term rentals.

“People are forced to get out of their homes every day, and this is an immediate solution,” said Max Carbonell, spokesman for the socialist union of homes in Catalonia, who helps the tenants face the eviction by facing companies by purchasing their homes. “Why build when you have accommodation that is already there?”

The Catalan government has sought other ways to maintain tenants in their homes, including the purchase of some buildings from investors. Last year, he spent 9 million euros to regain home Orsola, a historical residence taken by the Spanish investor Leoness Inversiones in 2021 for 6 million euros.

But activists and housing tenants protested the move, saying that investors who cause pain were setting from taxpayers’ money.

But the owners of real estate affirm that the regulations have become so protective towards the tenants that many owners prefer to leave the houses empty. “There is a lack of accommodation because developers, owners of houses and owners have been criminalized,” said Jesús Encinar, founder of idealist, the largest real estate research site in Spain.

The tension can be seen in a national law that Mr. Collboni has called “a black hole” which leaves vulnerable residents of buildings such as Casa de la Papallona. The law allows investors to purchase buildings to convert to temporary rents, which offer leaving lease contracts. The Spanish Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, introduced a bill to kill the law, but must face the opposition by legislators concerned about ownership rights.

New developers in Amsterdam, the bottom that purchased Casa de la Papallona, ​​also known as Casa Fajol, you have Hundreds of other apartments in Barcelona acquired For such use, often aimed at business travelers whose finances exceed those of the locals. The company did not respond to the requests for comment.

In a nearby neighborhood, inmobiliaria Gallardo, a developer managed by a family owner of Almirall, one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in Spain, has exploited a escapade in the living laws of Catalonia who opened briefly in 2023 to obtain licenses to convert all 120 residential apartments into a building of 11 layers for tourists.

“One day we noticed that some of our neighbors were moving, then more and more – 10 people remained in a week,” said Maite Martín, 63 years old, a university employee who lived in the building for 25 years.

A quarter of all apartments now loggia holidaymakers. The company did not respond to the requests for comment.

“This was a community of families and the elderly who lived here for decades,” said Mrs. Martín while she was sitting at her table with two neighbors who said she was surrounded by strangers. “That fabric is destroyed,” he added.

Mrs. Martín recently had to clean the vomiting outside the laundry on the balcony of tourists for parties for rent above her. Aided by the housing Union, the residents of his building and some tenants of the house of La Papallona have decided to remain in their homes as a form of protest.

The occupying properties have become a basic movement in Spain to protest against the housing crew, especially in Barcelona, ​​whose former mayor, There is colau, He was elected on a residential activism platform. But a recourse was formed and the Catalan government tried to counter the movement.

Among the turbulence, the government is taking forward with the construction of multiple houses. On a hill above the center of Barcelona, ​​the construction workers were engaged a recent day of the week that pour cement and installed lighting, kitchens, showers and stairs in the shell of a five -story building on top of land set aside by the Catalan government.

A private construction company, Arcadia Pla, had won a 1.8 million euro public offer to create 15 apartments with the cut of rent efficient from an energy point of view of up to 60 people. Thirty similar projects are on site, many of which are larger buildings than 60 apartments, part of the wider plan to expand the park for social construction of the region, said Carles Mas, an architect for the government of Catalonia that supervises the site.

Yet given the size of the crisis, it is necessary to do more, he said. “We have to find a way to move faster.”

José Bautista Contributed relationships.