More than half of the metropolitan municipalities have not generated protected housing in six years

BarcelonaMore than half of the municipalities in the Barcelona metropolitan area have not generated any protected housing (HPO) in the period between 2020 and 2025. This is indicated by the Association of Developers of Catalonia (APCE), which, according to data published this Tuesday, warns that the presence of HPO in the demarcation continues to be "insufficient and territorially very unequal in the metropolitan area". The APCE expresses particular concern about this point in the Catalan geography, as it is the area with the highest residential demand in Catalonia.

In fact, and considering only the year 2025, only one in four metropolitan municipalities – 23% of 131 locations – registered any provisional qualification of protected housing. In this regard, developers also observe that almost 90% of the towns and cities in the area registered a ratio of less than 1 protected housing unit per thousand inhabitants. According to the APCE, the Territorial Sectorial Housing Plan estimates that the metropolitan area needs the equivalent of 3 housing units per thousand inhabitants to cover the "growing and urgent" housing needs of society.

At the same time, developers denounce the "slowness" of the processes to move forward with protected housing. According to the data presented this Tuesday, in Barcelona and its surroundings, 104,004 applications were registered in the protected housing application registry, while the number of provisionally qualified HPO did not reach 3,000 units. This is equivalent to almost 35 applications for each protected housing unit initiated.

For the president of APCE, Xavier Vilajoana, the diagnosis is "clear". "The demand for protected housing is much higher than the new supply being generated. If for every HPO started there are almost 35 registered applications, the problem is not just regulation, but real construction capacity," he laments. This is why Vilajoana asks for "land, licenses, financing, legal certainty and economic viability", while advocating for establishing metropolitan governance in which residential needs "do not stop at municipal administrative limits".

Concern in the rest of the territory

The APCE data highlights the situation in the other Catalan regions, also in a situation where the supply continues to be insufficient to cover the registered demand for affordable housing. In the Girona area, during 2025, only 79 provisional certifications of protected housing were registered, compared to almost 5,000 active applications in the HPO Registry. The ratio, therefore, is even higher than in the metropolitan area, as for each protected housing unit initiated, there are more than 60 applications submitted.

But where the construction of this type of housing is most stagnant is in the Lleida and Tarragona regions. In the Ponent counties, during 2025, only 16 protected housing units were started. Of these, only one was in Alt Pirineu and Aran. Taking into account that the registry of HPO applicants in the region lists 2,625 applications, this is equivalent to more than 160 active files for each protected housing unit initiated.

On the other hand, in Camp de Tarragona and Terres de l'Ebre, 21 protected housing units were started in 2025, compared to 3,941 active applications. The demand, therefore, means having almost 188 open applications for each HPO initiated, the highest ratio in all of Catalonia.