{"id":2258,"date":"2024-04-24T09:42:48","date_gmt":"2024-04-24T09:42:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/webelongtotheland.org\/?page_id=2258"},"modified":"2025-05-09T15:26:06","modified_gmt":"2025-05-09T15:26:06","slug":"spain-people-without-houses","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/webelongtotheland.org\/index.php\/spain-people-without-houses\/","title":{"rendered":"Spain: People Without Houses"},"content":{"rendered":"[vc_row type=”full_width_content” full_screen_row_position=”middle” column_margin=”default” column_direction=”default” column_direction_tablet=”default” column_direction_phone=”default” bg_color=”#566678″ bg_image=”1052″ bg_position=”center center” background_image_loading=”default” bg_repeat=”no-repeat” scene_position=”center” top_padding=”12%” constrain_group_1=”yes” bottom_padding=”12%” left_padding_desktop=”10%” constrain_group_2=”yes” right_padding_desktop=”10%” top_padding_tablet=”25%” text_color=”light” text_align=”left” row_border_radius=”none” 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Spain:<\/h2>\n

People Without Houses<\/h2>\n[\/nectar_highlighted_text][divider line_type=”No Line” custom_height=”40″][vc_column_text max_width=”750″ text_direction=”default”]\n

In Barcelona, Spain, many families are not able to pay the rent nor buy a house. The 2008 economic crisis came in Spain with the bursting of a real estate bubble and a restructuring plan of the banking system. With the help of the government, investment funds have used the crisis to enter the Spanish housing market and hoard properties. The result has been a 55% increase in rental prices, 1,7 million people evicted from their homes and 73% empty houses in hands of corporations. Social organizations in Spain have mobilized fiercely to introduce measures to ensure the right to housing. This has led to the creation of a Housing Law, which aims to promote social housing, regulate the rental market and provide security measures against evictions.<\/em><\/p>\n

Text: Clara Roig
\nPhotographs: Bruna Casas \/ RUIDO Photo[\/vc_column_text][vc_column_text text_direction=”default”]\n

\"Eviction

Eviction of a family from their house in Barcelona, Spain. \u00a9 Bruna Casas \/ RUIDO Photo.<\/p><\/div>\n

[\/vc_column_text][divider line_type=”No Line” custom_height=”50″][vc_column_text max_width=”750″ text_direction=”default”]\n

Irene, Juanjo or Ana Mar\u00eda are some of the many people in Spain who lost their homes after the 2008 economic crisis. In Spain, the crisis had also precipitated the bursting of a real estate bubble, which had been promoted by easy credit at low interests by the banking system. Approximately, 60% of the credit granted by the Spanish banks was in the real estate sector. While in 2008 many construction and real estate companies went bankrupt, many families stopped being able to pay the mortgage. For 12 consecutive years (2008-2019), 156 evictions were carried out per day, amounting to 684,285 evictions and more than 1.7M people forced out of their homes, including children. Catalonia, the Autonomous Region to which Barcelona belongs, is where this phenomenon has been more excruciating, comprising 19% of the Spain\u2019s\u2019 evictions.<\/p>\n

Right after the 2008 crisis, Irene and her husband stopped being able to pay the mortgage of the apartment they had bought in 2000 in the outskirts of Barcelona. In 2011, the couple, who had four kids, lost the ownership of the house. The bank responsible for their mortgage, Caixa Tarragona, merged with another bank and sold the house in action for half of the price Irene had paid for. In 2018, the property went to the hands of the real estate company Fincas BCN, and Irene and her husband were left with a debt of 10,000\u20ac. Due to this debt, Irene\u2019s husband lost the Spanish residency and they were not able to access social housing. Even though they were in a vulnerable situation and had gone to court with the help of a neighbors\u2019 organization, in March 2022, eight police vans came to Irene\u2019s door to evict her and her family.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThey have evicted me from my home, where I have all my memories\u201d.<\/h4>\n<\/blockquote>\n[\/vc_column_text][divider line_type=”No Line” custom_height=”50″][vc_column_text text_direction=”default”]\n
\"Irene

Irene waits in her house for the eviction to happen with her things packed. \u00a9 Bruna Casas \/ RUIDO Photo.<\/p><\/div>\n[\/vc_column_text][divider line_type=”No Line” custom_height=”40″][vc_column_text max_width=”750″ text_direction=”default”]\n

Irene\u2019s story is not an isolated case, but an example of the collective repercussions of the financially oriented solution to the 2008 economic crisis. In short, governments gave more power to the banking systems, thus promoting the financialization of housing. Observatori DESC relates the consolidation of evictions with a series of laws that the Spanish government both from the left (PSOE) and the right (PP) approved from 2009 to 2013. These include laws that helped accelerate the judicial process of evictions (Law 19\/2009; Law 37\/2011), with some exceptions to vulnerable families. In 2013, PP approved a law to make the housing market more flexible, decreased the number of compulsory years for a rental contract from 5 to 3 and decoupled the Consumer Index Price (IPC) from the rent prices so they could increase above the consumer price. These laws came at the same time as a tax reform that allowed real estate companies to evade corporate income taxes. The aim of the reform was to encourage foreign capital to acquire the real estate stock with a high risk of default in hands of the wrecked Spanish banking system as well as of Sareb<\/a>, a public-private society created to deal with assets coming from the restructuring of the banking system.<\/p>\n

Between 2012-2013, investment funds such as Cerberus, Blackstone and Goldman Sachs acquired enough real estate assets to influence the housing market and create another bubble, this time, in the rental market. Since 2015, rent prices increased much more than housing prices, according to a study by the Bank of Spain<\/a>. In big cities such as Barcelona and Madrid, as well as other touristic areas, rent prices increased up to 55% from 2013 to 2019. By 2018, the Spanish banking system had 3,5 million empty houses in their stock while there were 100 evictions per day for not being able to pay the rent<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In 2013, Juanjo\u2019s mortgage in Ciutat Meridiana, in the outskirts of Barcelona, was suddenly raised 800\u20ac. Two years before Juanjo had lost his job as a distributor for an industrial food company and was riding out the crisis with temporary contracts and some loans from friends. He managed to get a rent in social housing until 2021, when his mortgage ended up in the hands of Divarian, a real estate society created in 2017 between Cerberus and BBVA<\/a> to transfer the risky housing assets from the bank to the investment fund, including Juanjo\u2019s mortgage. Now Juanjo continues to pay his rent despite the notice from Divarian that he must leave his place. He has tried to find other apartments for rent but has not found anything he can afford. He has spent 53 years in Ciutat Meridiana and does not want to leave the neighborhood.<\/p>\n

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\u201cBefore families lived here, they were my neighbors. Now you only see an iron door and alarm to avoid squats. What do they want to do here? We only want to live peacefully. I won\u2019t leave even if they pay me a fortune!\u201d<\/h4>\n<\/blockquote>\n[\/vc_column_text][divider line_type=”No Line” custom_height=”40″][vc_column_text text_direction=”default”]\n\n\t\t