Barcelona, Spain – The protesters returned to the streets throughout Spain on Saturday with anger at high housing costs without relief in sight.
Miles marched in the capital, Madrid, and more than 30 cities in a demonstration organized by housing activists and backed by the main unions in Spain.
He The housing crisis has hit particularly in Spainwhere there is a strong tradition of housing and few public homes for rent. Rentals have been driven by greater demand. Buying a house has become inaccessible for many, with market pressures and speculation that increases prices, especially in large cities and coastal areas.
A generation of young people says they have to keep their parents or spend large just to share an apartment, with little chances of saving enough to buy a house one day. High housing costs mean that even those with traditionally well -paid jobs are struggling to reach the end of the month.
“I live with four people and still, I assign 30 or 40% of my salary to rent,” said Mari Sánchez, a 26 -year -old lawyer in Madrid. “That does not allow me to save. That does not allow me to do anything. It doesn’t even allow me to buy a car. That is my current situation, and the one that many young people live.”
The average rent in Spain has almost doubled in the last 10 years. The price per square meter increased from 7.2 euros ($ 7.9) in 2014 to 13 euros last year, according to the idealistic real estate website. The increase is larger in Madrid and Barcelona.
Income have not been able to keep up, especially for younger people in a country with chronically high unemployment.
Spain does not have public housing in which other European nations have invested to colchar the tenants with difficulties of a market that is setting them.
Spain is close to the lower extreme of the organization for the countries of economic cooperation and development with public homes for the rental consisting of less than 2% of all available homes. The OECD average is 7%. In France it is 14%, Great Britain 16%and the Netherlands of 34%.
The angry tenants point to cases of international coverage funds that buy properties, often with the objective of renting them to foreign tourists. The question has been accused so politically that the Government of the City of Barcelona promised last year To eliminate its 10,000 permits for short -term rentalsMany of them announced on platforms such as Airbnb, by 2028.
The protesters in Madrid sang on Saturday “to obtain Airbnb from our neighborhoods” and held signs against short -term rentals.
The largest initiative of the central government to stop the cost of housing is a rental capitalization mechanism that has offered regional authorities, depending on a price index established by the Ministry of Housing.
But such measures have not shown enough to stop protests in the last two years. Experts say the situation will probably not improve soon.
“This is not the first, nor will it be the last, (Housing protest) given the seriousness of the housing crisis,” Ignesi Martí, a professor at the ESADE Business School and head of his worthy Housing Observatory.
“We saw this with the financial crisis (2008-2012) when (a protest movement) lasted until there was a certain economic recovery and a reduction in social tension,” Marti added.
