Anger over unaffordable housing in Spain has triggered a political crisis, forcing Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez to call a snap general election for November 29. The early vote was precipitated by mounting public fury, which reached a breaking point on September 23 when 87-year-old Maricarmen Abascal was evicted from her lifelong home in Madrid on a stretcher after the real estate firm owning the apartment drastically increased her rent.
Abascal, who died on Wednesday, became the symbol of a deepening housing emergency that spans generations and socioeconomic lines, affecting young and old, renters and buyers, workers and pensioners alike. Her eviction sparked national demonstrations, including a high-profile protest where hundreds of demonstrators camped out in central Madrid’s Puerta del Sol square.
Economic Disconnect and Rental Burdens
The core of the public grievance lies in a widening gap between wages and property costs. According to figures from the National Statistics Institute (INE), the average gross monthly salary in Spain sits at around €2,460 ($2,750). Meanwhile, data from the real estate portal Idealista shows that renting a 50-square-metre apartment in Madrid averaged €1,170 per month in September, consuming around half of a normal monthly wage and far exceeding the 30 percent income threshold recommended by housing professionals and public bodies.
The crisis is particularly acute for younger generations. While almost three-quarters of Spanish households own their primary residence—a legacy of General Francisco Franco’s 1939–1975 dictatorship, during which a housing minister declared the regime’s goal to create “a country of owners and not proletarians”—that model is breaking down. INE data indicates that more than half of adults under 30 were renting in 2025.
Tourist Rentals and Investment Funds Limit Housing Supply
Housing experts point to multiple compounding pressures driving the shortage. In popular destinations such as Barcelona, residents frequently complain that short-term tourist accommodation is limiting long-term rental supply and driving up prices. Simultaneously, investment funds with large housing portfolios, often criticized as “vulture funds,” face accusations of acquiring properties and hiking rents for maximum profits.
Public housing stock remains critically low. Madrid serves as an extreme example of the deficit, maintaining only about 10,000 social housing units for a population of 3.5 million residents, creating a demand so severe that some public apartments are distributed via lottery.
Jorge Galindo, director of the Centre for Economic Policy at Esade business school, told AFP that the 2008 global financial crash marked a turning point. The collapse of the real estate bubble sparked the “collapse” of construction and the “destruction of a million jobs” in the sector, and housing supply has failed to keep up. New construction fell from around 260,000 builds per year during the 1990s to 92,000 in 2025. Galindo warned that Spain, a nation of around 50 million people, risks becoming “a society of inheritors” where homeownership depends on parents passing down property.
Housing Crisis Prompts Early Parliamentary Elections
How to solve a puzzle that has bedevilled successive governments has become a central debate of the upcoming parliamentary campaign. Last week, Sánchez’s leftist minority coalition proposed a series of measures intended to curb the crisis, including more restrictions on evictions, a ban on speculative home purchases, and automatic tenant contract renewals. However, the administration failed to pass the measures in parliament, prompting Sánchez to call an early vote originally planned for 2027.
Frustration over legislative gridlock has also galvanized organized labor. Spain’s main labor unions have scheduled a general strike for November 11, driven largely by political paralysis over housing.
The political divide over solutions remains stark. In 2023, Sánchez’s government passed legislation aimed at expanding social housing, regulating rents in areas under the greatest stress, and penalizing owners of vacant properties. Yet those measures have failed to halt spiraling prices or quiet public discontent. Conversely, the main opposition right-wing Popular Party advocates a building boom to make up the deficit between supply and demand.
Reflecting on the political dynamics of the crisis, Galindo noted a paradox: those who suffer most from the housing crisis—primarily young people, who vote less, and immigrants—hold the least weight at the ballot box.
