Housing politics
Catalonia’s Latest Housing ‘solution’: Blame Speculators And Ban Buyers
Author: 
Mark Stücklin
Posted on
Catalonia’s politicians are at it again—cooking up another intervention in the housing market that will make things worse for everyone, except perhaps for those who thrive on crisis.
The Generalitat has announced it will study whether to ban property purchases that are not for a buyer’s main residence, following a report from the Barcelona Metropolitan Strategic Plan (PEMB) suggesting such restrictions might be legally viable if applied in limited areas and timeframes. President Salvador Illa says he’s open to the idea “as long as it’s legal, realistic and effective.”
A familiar story: more controls, less housing
Catalonia already leads Spain in housing-market intervention. Rent caps, a new registry of large landlords (with fines for non-compliance), higher property transfer tax for institutional owners, and Barcelona’s now-infamous 30% affordable-housing rule have all helped freeze development. The result? Fewer homes and higher prices—the opposite of what was promised.
Now, some local councils and left-wing parties want to go a step further and prohibit purchases by anyone who doesn’t plan to live in the property, arguing this would stop “speculative buying.” But speculation has long since left the Spanish housing market. Costs and risks are too high, returns too low, and the timeframes far too long for speculators to bother. The scapegoat exists only in the political imagination.
Politics of crisis
This obsession with “speculators” is revealing. Every time Catalan left-wing politicians—or even the socialist government in Madrid—talk about housing, that word pops up in the first breath. It’s a convenient bogeyman to distract from years of failed housing policy. In reality, the market is driven by demographics, supply constraints, and the sheer difficulty of building anything new in Spain, not by profiteers flipping flats.
The harder truth is that for the far left, a housing crisis isn’t a problem—it’s a political opportunity. The more acute the pain, the easier it is to mobilise anger, radicalise debate, and push the idea that capitalism itself is to blame. In that sense, worsening conditions serve their ideological agenda perfectly.
A legal stretch too far
Finally, there’s the small matter of legality. Property rights are a national competence, not a regional one. Catalonia almost certainly lacks the authority to vet who can buy a home and for what purpose. Any such restriction would quickly be challenged in the courts, as have so many other local experiments in intervention.
For now, this proposal remains just that—a political signal rather than a serious policy. But it confirms a familiar pattern: when faced with housing shortages, Catalonia reaches for control instead of construction. And that, unfortunately, is why the crisis will continue.
Author: 
Mark Stücklin
Posted on
It seems that when it comes to Spain’s housing woes, both ends of the political spectrum can agree on at least one thing: foreigners make an easy scapegoat.
This week, political party Vox joined the chorus calling for higher taxes on foreign property buyers. The far-right party has proposed a new levy on foreign purchasers, with the proceeds supposedly funding tax breaks and subsidised housing for Spaniards. The stated aim is to stop what they describe as a “mass acquisition of housing” by foreign capital, which they claim is pricing Spaniards—especially young people—out of the market.
In their words, the rate of home ownership among young Spaniards has fallen from 56% to 27% over the last two decades, while foreign purchases have risen from 7.6% in 2007 to 19.3% in 2025. Vox calls this an “expulsion effect” and says it wants to “protect Spaniards from speculation and the massive purchase of homes by foreign fortunes and funds.” They are echoing the socialist Spanish President Pedro Sánchez who claims that all foreign buyers are “speculators”.
A familiar tune from the other side
What’s striking is how much this sounds like the rhetoric of the hard left, which also loves to talk about “speculators” and “foreign funds” hoovering up Spanish property. The far left blames foreign investors and holiday-home buyers for rising prices and falling rental supply—sometimes even calling for outright bans on foreign purchases. Vox, meanwhile, wants to hit them with extra taxes. The ideological packaging is different, but the impulse is the same.
The real problem lies closer to home
Foreign buyers do play a visible role in certain markets—coastal resort areas in particular—but they are not the reason housing has become unaffordable in Madrid, Barcelona, or Seville. The real culprits are chronic undersupply, suffocating regulation, high transaction costs, and years of policy failure. Instead of building more homes, streamlining planning rules, or cutting taxes on construction and renovation, politicians of all stripes find it easier to point the finger at foreigners.
Blaming outsiders may win votes, but it won’t build a single new home.
Barcelona’s housing crisis is not an accident. It’s the inevitable result of years of disastrous policymaking by a city hall that seems determined to make a bad situation worse.
A city bursting at the seams
Barcelona’s structural problem is simple: demand vastly exceeds supply. Immigration-driven population growth has fuelled constant demand for homes in a small city squeezed between the sea and the Collserola hills, where buildable land is scarce. The logical response would be to make it easier and more attractive to build and renovate housing in and around the city, and to improve transport links so people can live in the suburbs while still working in Barcelona.
But that’s not what the city’s political class is doing.
Banning foreigners and imaginary “speculators”
This week’s city council meetings made that painfully clear. First, the Socialist Party (PSC) proposed calling on the Spanish government and the EU to ban non-EU foreign non-residents from buying property in Barcelona — a measure the city doesn’t even have the power to implement. The idea itself, first floated by Pedro Sánchez back in January, has gone nowhere in Madrid because it wouldn’t solve anything and would likely create new problems. The proposal failed to pass in Barcelona too, but it reveals a mindset: when faced with a shortage of homes, blame outsiders.
In the same session, the council voted to explore ways to ban “speculative” housing investment — another gesture with no practical purpose. There are no property speculators in Barcelona. The risks are too high, the taxes too heavy, and the returns too low. But “speculators” make a convenient scapegoat for the left, a mythical enemy to distract from the real policy failures that caused the crisis in the first place.
Policies that strangle supply
Those failures are not hard to spot. The city’s 30% social housing quota on new developments has effectively killed new home building, as projects become financially unviable. Rent controls have driven landlords out of the market, leading to a collapse in the supply of long-term rental housing. Today, it is almost impossible to find a standard lease in Barcelona.
Every intervention has reduced supply, discouraged investment, and pushed prices higher — precisely the opposite of what was intended. Yet rather than admit these policies have failed, the same politicians are now doubling down by talking about banning foreigners and “speculators”.
The wrong people in charge
Barcelona doesn’t need more prohibitions — it needs more homes. The only realistic path out of this mess is to make building and investing in housing easier, faster, and cheaper. That means cutting red tape, encouraging renovation, and attracting private capital into build-to-rent and buy-to-let projects.
But with the current crop of ideologues in charge, don’t expect that to happen. Under their watch, Barcelona’s housing market will only get more dysfunctional.
Author: 
Mark Stücklin
Posted on
Barcelona’s housing crisis is not an accident. It’s the inevitable result of years of disastrous policymaking by a city hall that seems determined to make a bad situation worse.
A city bursting at the seams
Barcelona’s structural problem is simple: demand vastly exceeds supply. Immigration-driven population growth has fuelled constant demand for homes in a small city squeezed between the sea and the Collserola hills, where buildable land is scarce. The logical response would be to make it easier and more attractive to build and renovate housing in and around the city, and to improve transport links so people can live in the suburbs while still working in Barcelona.
But that’s not what the city’s political class is doing.
Banning foreigners and imaginary “speculators”
This week’s city council meetings made that painfully clear. First, the Socialist Party (PSC) proposed calling on the Spanish government and the EU to ban non-EU foreign non-residents from buying property in Barcelona — a measure the city doesn’t even have the power to implement. The idea itself, first floated by Pedro Sánchez back in January, has gone nowhere in Madrid because it wouldn’t solve anything and would likely create new problems. The proposal failed to pass in Barcelona too, but it reveals a mindset: when faced with a shortage of homes, blame outsiders.
In the same session, the council voted to explore ways to ban “speculative” housing investment — another gesture with no practical purpose. There are no property speculators in Barcelona. The risks are too high, the taxes too heavy, and the returns too low. But “speculators” make a convenient scapegoat for the left, a mythical enemy to distract from the real policy failures that caused the crisis in the first place.
Policies that strangle supply
Those failures are not hard to spot. The city’s 30% social housing quota on new developments has effectively killed new home building, as projects become financially unviable. Rent controls have driven landlords out of the market, leading to a collapse in the supply of long-term rental housing. Today, it is almost impossible to find a standard lease in Barcelona.
Every intervention has reduced supply, discouraged investment, and pushed prices higher — precisely the opposite of what was intended. Yet rather than admit these policies have failed, the same politicians are now doubling down by talking about banning foreigners and “speculators”.
The wrong people in charge
Barcelona doesn’t need more prohibitions — it needs more homes. The only realistic path out of this mess is to make building and investing in housing easier, faster, and cheaper. That means cutting red tape, encouraging renovation, and attracting private capital into build-to-rent and buy-to-let projects.
But with the current crop of ideologues in charge, don’t expect that to happen. Under their watch, Barcelona’s housing market will only get more dysfunctional.
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