A Housing Crisis for Spain’s Center-Left Government
In Spain, rents have risen 74% over the last decade, with even steeper rises in the main cities. The Socialist-led government’s Housing Act has failed to rein in speculation, leaving many working-class Spaniards struggling to pay the bills.
Residents and tenants’ union members gather to prevent the eviction of a building called Casa Orsola, which has become a symbol of Barcelona’s housing crisis, in Barcelona on January 31, 2025. (Josep Lago / AFP via Getty Images)
Last Thursday, housing activists hung from the façade of Madrid resident Mariano’s apartment, to prevent the eviction decreed by his aristocratic, multi-property-owning landlord. The attempted removal in the working-class neighborhood of Vallecas was just one of the approximately eighty evictions that occur daily in Spain, the most painful face of a housing crisis driven by relentlessly rising rental prices. “Millions of people survive with €300 or €400 per month after having paid the rent. We don’t only work for our bosses, we work for the rentiers, and that’s unbearable,” Valeria Racu, the spokesperson for the Madrid Tenants’ Union, recently explained.
This may augur poorly for Spain’s center-left government, headed by Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE) leader Pedro Sánchez. Already in the wake of the financial crash of 2008, the country’s mortgage crisis brought José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero’s PSOE government to its knees (losing power in 2011) and plunged the Spanish political system into a deep crisis, which gave rise to Podemos and the Catalan independence movement. Likewise, the current rental bubble could drag down Sánchez, as he resists taking necessary measures to guarantee the right to housing.
A Weak Government
The Spanish government, composed of the PSOE and left-wing alliance Sumar, relies on a parliamentary majority made up of an eclectic range of more or less progressive forces, regionalists, and the center-right Catalan pro-independence party Junts. This fragility is compounded by a fierce campaign from the political, media, and judicial right to weaken the government and the prime minister in particular. Sánchez and his personal and political circle have had to face a flood of lawsuits, often based on questionable information from conservative media, which have also affected his popularity. According to the latest 40dB poll, the conservative Partido Popular leads the PSOE in voting intentions, and the far-right Vox is gaining ground. Over the last year, the housing crisis has become the primary concern for the Spanish population, adding to the government’s woes.
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