Spain's housing crisis drives tax plans, a strike dispute and debate before the 29 November election

Rents keep rising before the vote

Rents kept climbing in October. Idealista's latest report put the average price at 15.1 euros per square metre, up 5.6% on a year earlier. Madrid is still the most expensive city to rent in, at 23.4 euros per square metre, with Barcelona second at 20.5 euros. The figures arrive as Spain heads into a general election on 29 November, and housing has moved back to the centre of political debate.

Spain average15.1

Madrid23.4

Barcelona20.5

Spain average

15.1 EUR per m2

Madrid

23.4 EUR per m2

Barcelona

20.5 EUR per m2

Data from the article text

The dispute between the government and the opposition sharpened after the eviction and subsequent death of a woman, a case that revived protests by social groups and demands for stronger tenant protection. The government of Pedro Sánchez then put forward two royal decree-laws with new measures to ease access to housing and give tenants more security. Those decrees did not win enough support in Congress.

Decrees, dissolution and a landlord tax

On 2 October, PP, Vox and Junts voted against both decrees, which left the government without its main housing measures. Junts' position was decisive in the parliamentary defeat. Three days later, on 5 October, Pedro Sánchez announced the dissolution of the Cortes and general elections for 29 November. The decision was published in the BOE the following day, and Sánchez argued that voters must give him a parliamentary majority able to pass his agenda.

Ada Colau, the Frente Amplio candidate and former mayor of Barcelona, has proposed a 10% tax on the value of large landlords' properties rented above a state price index. She says the measure would make it less profitable to keep flats at high rents and could bring rents down by around 30%. Explaining the plan on Onda Cero's Más de Uno, she argued that Spain does not lack homes and that the problem lies in how they are used.

“Housing is for living in, not for speculating. That has to be the goal.”

Colau acknowledged that building public housing takes years, so she places the landlord levy among measures with more immediate effects.

Unions split over the 11 November strike

A general strike has been called for 11 November. Joaquín Pérez, general secretary of USO, Spain's third most representative union behind CCOO and UGT, supports the goals of the housing mobilisations but not their timing. He said the electoral period could make the action look like an attempt to interfere in the vote. USO backs demands on housing, wages and job quality, and says it will present its claims to whichever government emerges after the election. Pérez added that some members think joining would be appropriate, but that the union's values rule out a move that would create more interference than it would gain.

“Although there are reasons, it is not the moment to hold a strike.”

Artists, economists and the structural causes

Joan Manuel Serrat, 82, told laSexta's Más Vale Tarde, in an interview recorded during a visit to León for the Premio Leteo 2026, that the housing problem has reached its limit. He linked the unrest to years of strain on public education and health care. Àgata Roca, 58, who won the Max award for best theatre actress in 2025, told 3Cat's Vertex that young people now find it very hard to rent, share a flat or take out a mortgage, and that housing is becoming a luxury.

Santiago Niño Becerra, 75, an emeritus professor of economic structure at Ramon Llull University, argues that Spanish families absorb the shock that would otherwise cause widespread urban unrest. He sees the family as the main buffer.

“There is no housing revolution in Spain because the family acts as the only social cushion.”

Niño Becerra traces the problem to 2 May 1956, when, in his account, the Franco regime chose to make Spain a country of owners rather than proletarians. He says rental supply has fallen 61% in recent years. Data from the Observatorio de Emancipación of the Consejo de la Juventud de España show average rent absorbing 98.7% of the average net salary of a young worker.

A structural deficit and a call for regulation

David J. Madden, a sociologist at the London School of Economics, co-wrote In Defence of Housing with Peter Marcuse, a book published in Spain in 2019. He argues that the housing problem has not diminished in most countries and that housing should be regulated in tenants' interest and provided regardless of income or wealth. Spanish figures cited alongside his interview show house prices up 74% according to specialist portals, or 48% in official appraised values, and rents up 45%. The Banco de España puts the country's housing deficit at 750,000 homes.