Spain’s cabinet ministers said they have an agreement on new measures to curb the housing crisis in the country after the eviction of 87-year-old Maricarmen last week from her apartment sparked protests.
Spain’s coalition government on Tuesday said it has agreed new measures to tackle the country’s housing crisis after the forceful removal of an 87-year-old pensioner last week from her apartment in Madrid sparked nationwide solidarity protests.
Spanish Health Minister Monica Garcia said the housing legislation includes a ban on evictions until 2030, tighter rules for short-term rentals and a two-year extension for existing leases.
“It’s time to intervene in the speculative housing market and begin to rebalance the scales between citizens and vulture funds,” Garcia, who belongs to the leftist government’s junior coalition partner Sumar, wrote in a post on X.
It will lower prices a bit short term but will make things worst long term. Similar laws were already implemented in Catalonia and Pais Vasco and it lowered the number of apartments available for rent in those places.
At the same time this is what the left demanded. Sanchez failed to address the issue properly over the years* and now all he can do are some short term, reactionary measures to appease the protesters. He will lose next elections and PP will do even less do fix things. Over the next decade or two things will only get worse. The right solution is of course to build more public housing, more protected housing, promote coops and turn housing into a right, not an investment.
*Understandably, he was fighting for survival most of his term and the coalitions was incredibly weak. It was clear to me this will happen from the moment I saw the first election polls. The left, as always, is too fragmented to govern properly.
isn’t that the goal? are those formerly rented apartments now in the possession of its resident?
No, the exact opposite happened:
https://www.elmundo.es/economia/vivienda/2026/07/16/6a5793aae9cf4ab9528b458d.html
They say they had less apartments for rent but demand grew 4x. I wouldn’t say the data they a representing is very solid it I would be surprised if the properties were simply sold to residents. People usually rent because they can’t afford to buy an apartment. Even if you will get more apartments in the market the price will not fall so drastically that everyone will simply buy an apartment.
Many people have extra apartments because they inherited them. Those apartments don’t cost them anything so when it comes to renting they have to compare the profits with the risks. When you rent out an apartment you’re risking that it will be damaged or that someone will stop paying rent and refuse to leave. This means it will lose value. If you limit the profits someone can achieve (by controlling rent) some people will decide it’s simply not worth to rent them out anymore. This is what happened in Catalunia and Pais Vasco.
I think you mean reactive measures. Reactionary is a political term that describes someone who opposes progressive change and wants a return to the old ways. Reactive is a more general term for responding to something after it happens, rather then acting before it happens.
These measures seem progressive, albeit in a small way, so they aren’t reactionary; but they are reactive.
On the other hand you have trump who does stuff like kidnapping maduro, which is reactionary as it harkens back to an older American imperialism; but it’s not reactive as nothing really prompted it.
Yep, reactive.