Spain’s housing crisis is a warning for all of Europe – rights mean nothing if they’re not enforced

Spain has a constitutional right to housing – but it hasn’t stopped rents and property prices from skyrocketing.

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Demonstrators march through the centre of Madrid to protest against high house prices and rents and to demand measures to tackle the housing crisis in Spain, on 26 September 2026.
ÓSCAR GONZÁLEZ FUENTES/ShutterstockWhen Maricarmen Abascal, a disabled 87 year-old, was evicted from the Madrid home where she had lived for 71 years, hundreds of people gathered outside in an attempt to prevent it. She was eventually forcibly removed from the building, and taken to hospital on a stretcher.

Her eviction sparked a wave of protests (still ongoing at the time of writing) against a housing crisis that, for many, has endured since the 2008 crash.

Following a week of negotiations and widespread demonstrations, Maricarmen’s landlord – a private investment fund that had hiked her rent by 230% – agreed to let her return under a new eight-year tenancy with limited rent. She is expected to return home after leaving hospital.

But the protests that followed her eviction are not just about one woman’s story. They reflect a deeper problem that extends beyond Spain. Across Europe, countless others like Maricarmen are facing similar struggles to find and keep a roof over their heads.

Spain’s social housing crisis

In Spain, the contradiction is striking. Article 47 of Spain’s Constitution recognises the right to “decent and adequate” housing, and requires public authorities to create the “conditions necessary to make that right effective”.

Yet Spain has remarkably little social housing. Estimates put social housing at between 1,5% to 3,3% of the housing stock, varying across regions.

Spain inherited a housing model from the Francoist dictatorship, which was historically oriented towards home ownership through a combination of subsidised mortgages, tax incentives and systematic privatisation of publicly funded housing. These policies made it easier for many households to buy property during the decades leading up to the financial bubble, but left the country with a comparatively small social rental sector.

The financial crash of 2008 brought this gap to the centre of the public debate. The resulting wave of evictions exposed the limits of a system that had transferred public investment into private housing, leaving few social housing alternatives for households losing their homes.

Housing rights activism pushed the issue onto the political agenda, prompting reforms from 2013 onward, at both the regional and central level.

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A fragmented system

Housing is largely devolved in Spain. The country’s 17 regions – known as Comunidades Autónomas, each with its own parliament and government – are responsible for setting their own housing policies.

Some have used their autonomy to discourage large landowners from keeping empty homes, or to regulate tourist accommodation and strengthen protections for people facing eviction. Others, however, have chosen not to intervene in the housing market. These differences have produced distinct housing models within Spain.

Catalonia and Madrid illustrate this contrast. Madrid has a more market-oriented model, while the Catalan government has adopted more extensive housing regulations.

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Spain’s central government has also increasingly shaped housing policy over the past decade, acting mainly through its constitutional powers in economic matters and equality in the exercise of rights. This culminated in the 2023 Housing Act, Spain’s first state law on the right to housing. The Act enabled regions to establish rent caps in designated “stressed areas”, alongside stronger tenant protections.

But further measures have proved politically difficult. A housing decree approved by the central government in March was rejected by Congress, while a proposal circulated in July did not get enough parliamentary support to be put to a vote.

Maricarmen’s eviction has once again brought housing to the centre of public debate, and has already driven an agreement to pass new housing legislation. But Spain’s experience shows that no single legal or regulatory measure can resolve the problem. Housing systems are built over decades – and decades of underinvestment and inaction cannot be reversed through a few legislative changes. Meaningful change takes sustained effort over a long time.

Europe: rights vs housing shortages

Maricarmen’s case is not uniquely Spanish. Rising rents, limited social housing, insecure tenancies and pressure from tourism and investment are making housing increasingly difficult to access in countries like The Netherlands, Germany and France.

Ireland’s crisis is especially acute. Our comparative research on Ireland and Spain found that, despite their different legal systems and housing traditions, both countries are experiencing the same outcome: severe, protracted housing insecurity leading to evictions and homelessness.

As rents skyrocket across the country, Ireland has spent several years debating whether to introduce an explicit constitutional right to housing. Constitutional recognition could strengthen the legal status of housing and shape how housing policy develops.

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But Spain offers a cautionary example. It has a right to housing written into its constitution, but formal legal declarations are not enough. A right also needs strong institutions, consolidated over time and capable of putting it into practice through social housing, public investment, tenant protections and policies that can respond to changing markets.

Spain’s experience therefore points to a broader issue. Emergency measures can prevent vulnerable people from being forcibly displaced from their homes, but these can only provide temporary solutions. Ultimately, the right to housing is only protected through the “progressive realisation” of the conditions that make adequate, secure and affordable housing accessible to all.

Recent aims for changes in housing regulation across Europe – not to mention the groundswell of mass public protest across Spain’s squares and streets – suggest a hopeful trend towards rethinking housing, and treating it as a right rather than a simple market asset.

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Andrei Quintiá Pastrana’s research is funded by the Spanish Research Council (AEI), the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology (FECYT) and the Galician Research Council (GAIN).

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