Housing: the Catalunya laboratory

In the last decade, Catalonia has become one of the main laboratories for housing regulation in Spain. The puzzle of the housing emergency has left behind a trail of measures promoted by the administrations to protect the most vulnerable households, expand the stock of social housing, or contain rents amid the unstoppable rise in prices, while new rules have been introduced to define who is a large holder or to limit the use of seasonal contracts. The latest of these laws promoted by the Generalitat, against the “speculative purchase” of properties, did not pass the examination of the Consell de Garanties Estatutàries this summer. The Catalan government has committed to modifying the regulation, which has been strongly criticized by employers and real estate sector entities, considering that it will worsen the supply crisis. While owners warn that overregulation has generated even more legal uncertainty, the movement for the right to decent housing alerts to the loopholes in these rules.

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More than ten years have passed since, in 2015, in the midst of recovery after the harshest effects of the financial crisis, the Parliament of Catalonia approved a law promoted, among other entities, by the Platform of People Affected by Mortgages (PAH). The regulation introduced measures against evictions at a time when foreclosures were counted by the thousands. Although the Constitutional Court invalidated some of its key articles, that law opened a new era of reforms that, during the following decade, have expanded and modified the rules of the housing market.

One of the measures that has generated the most reactions – and continues to do so – is the rent cap. The 2020 Catalan law was the first attempt to contain rents through an index that limited the prices of new contracts. Two years later, the Constitutional Court halted these aspirations, considering that the Generalitat was invading state competencies. However, the measure came back into force with the new regulation of the Spanish government, which reinstated this control in 2024. Catalonia was the first community to request and apply this price limitation through the declaration of 271 stressed municipalities, which are now 302.

For the Economics professor at Universitat Pompeu Fabra José García Montalvo, the 2020 Catalan law was “harmful” and “terrible” because it did not take into account key differential characteristics of the flats and penalized rehabilitation. Regarding the state law, the academic believes that, as a consequence, owners have become more “selective,” renting their flats to families with more resources and pushing lower incomes towards informal or room rentals. Additionally, García Montalvo does not trust the Incasòl deposits as a statistical source to analyze the evolution of this price containment following the cap. “Only those who have been able to rent appear,” points out this economist.

The second vice president of the Col·legi d’Agents de la Propietat Inmobiliària and general director of Amat Immobiliaris, Guifré Homedes, laments that the supply “has collapsed” and that many owners have decided to sell or give flats to relatives rather than put them up for traditional rent.

In the field of protected housing creation, in 2018, the Barcelona City Council – then with Ada Colau as mayor – promoted the reservation of 30% of new real estate developments and major rehabilitations for official protected housing (VPO). After eight years of application, the current council acknowledges that the measure has only allowed the incorporation of 34 affordable social homes completed, far below initial forecasts. For the president of the Associació de Promotors de Catalunya (APCE), Xavier Vilajoana, the 30% reservation has “drastically” reduced housing production in the Catalan capital and has meant a brake on rehabilitations, increasing the risk of degradation. “We will be the Havana of Catalonia,” he laments, and considers that political leaders have “supreme ignorance” of the real functioning of the market.

For his part, Homedes observes a “consensus” within the sector on the need to rethink the regulation, due to the unfeasibility of applying it in small developments and the lack of land. On the other hand, from the Tenants’ Union, its spokesperson, Carme Arcarazo, criticizes that non-compliance with this regulation is “absolutely blatant,” as investors have circumvented the rule by rehabilitating the homes floor by floor, without sufficient inspections.

Within the mission to capture more social housing, the anthropologist and co-founder of the Institut de Recerca Urbana de Barcelona (IDRA) Jaime Palomera also highlights the importance of the legislative change that allowed in 2019 that new official protected homes became permanent. “It ends the historical anomaly of making housing with temporary protection, which lost its qualification after a few years. In this way, Catalonia follows the example of the Basque Country, which changed it twenty years ago,” he adds. In 2025, the Government also expanded by decree law the rights of first refusal and redemption of the administration, which allow it to buy a home before or after it is sold to a third party. García Montalvo views the measure positively as a quick way to grow the stock of social housing.

Some of these regulatory modifications have also redefined what is understood by a large holder in Catalonia and have applied conditions to “favor residential demand and penalize speculative demand,” Palomera recalls. Although the state definition establishes a large holder as someone who owns more than 10 urban residential properties, in 2024 the Generalitat activated the possibility of setting the threshold at five or more flats in stressed areas.

For economist José García Montalvo, “ideology” has prevailed in the definition of who is a large holder. In his opinion, the Spanish housing market is very fragmented – with a majority of “small owners” – and no one has enough power to control prices. “They are legislating madly trying to affect not even 10%, because the real large holder is the public administration,” says Vilajoana, from APCE.

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The rent cap was a great victory for the Tenants’ Union, which considers it “evident” that it is working. Still, Arcarazo denounces that prices are not falling as much as they should because sanctions are not being applied to owners who violate the rule. She also welcomes that at the beginning of the year the Government extended this limit to seasonal rentals but denounces that portals are still full of ads that exceed the prices established by the index. However, Homedes believes that the regulation has not succeeded in making these flats return to the long-stay market, as demand (for example, students or workers who are passing through) has not decreased.

After the implementation of this string of regulations, the debate to find a stable solution to the housing problem in Catalonia remains open.