Protesters returned to the streets across Spain on Saturday in anger over high housing costs for which no relief is in sight. Thousands marched in the capital, Madrid, along with Barcelona and over 30 other cities in a demonstration organized by housing activists and backed by Spain's main labor unions. The housing crisis has hit particularly hard in Spain, where there is a strong tradition of home ownership and scant public housing for rent. Rents have been driven up by increased demand. Buying a home has become unaffordable for many, the AP reports, with market pressures and speculation driving up prices, especially in big cities and coastal areas.
A generation of young people say they have to stay with their parents or spend big just to share an apartment, with little chance of saving enough to one day purchase a home. High housing costs mean even those with traditionally well-paying jobs are struggling to make ends meet. "I'm living with four people and still, I allocate 30 or 40% of my salary to rent," said Mari Sánchez, a 26-year-old lawyer in Madrid. "That doesn't allow me to save. That doesn't allow me to do anything. It doesn't even allow me to buy a car." The average rent in Spain has almost doubled in the past 10 years, and incomes have failed to keep up.
Spain does not have the public housing that other European nations have invested in to cushion struggling renters from a market that is pricing them out, per the AP. Angry renters point to international hedge funds buying up properties, often with the aim of renting them to foreign tourists. The question has become so politically charged that Barcelona's city government pledged last year to phase out all its 10,000 permits for short-term rentals, many of them advertised on platforms like Airbnb, by 2028. Marchers in Madrid on Saturday chanted "Get Airbnb out of our neighborhoods" and held up signs against short-term rentals.
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