Why was public spending on housing the only major item that fell in 2024?

Public spending increased last year, according to the latest data published by the Ministry of Finance. The central government, regional governments, and municipalities spent €725.001 billion in 2024, 6.6% more than the previous year, thanks to a general increase across all ten major spending categories, with the exception of one: housing. This is according to the Functional Classification of Public Spending (COFOG), which structures spending by levels in accordance with the methodology published by the United Nations. Spending in the housing and community services category last year, according to these provisional figures that will be confirmed in 2026, was €7.613 billion, a decrease of 2.7%. This amount is equivalent to 0.5% of Spain's GDP, well below the categories of social protection (18.7%), health (6.5%), general public services (5.8%), and economic affairs (5.1%), among others. The decline in housing investment is explained by the decrease in spending by local governments, which plummeted by 4.8%, well below the only other two categories that also declined: economic affairs (-0.5%) and leisure and culture (-0.1%). In the case of the autonomous communities, this spending was also the only one that fell, but it did so by only 0.5%. Central government spending, on the other hand, skyrocketed by 14%. The base effect, a possible explanation

It is striking that public spending is decreasing at a time of heightened concern about the widespread housing access problems affecting Catalonia, Spain, and Europe as a whole. However, it is important to note that in the previous year, 2023, the housing and community services category behaved in the complete opposite way: spending by all levels of government grew by 21%, reaching €7.821 billion.

This phenomenon is known in statistics as base effectAnd it refers to the figure against which the indicator is compared: if the starting point is exceptionally high, as the 2023 figure is in this case, this distorts the reading of growth rates the following year. However, in the case of state spending, which grew by 14% last year, it also increased in 2023, by 7.5%.

Catalonia, on the decline

In Catalonia, public spending on housing was the only major item that fell (-4.3%), reaching €831 million. This figure is lower than the average decline across Spain (6.6%), and total spending in this category represents 1.7% of total expenditure and 0.3% of GDP. In Catalonia, this base effect caused by the 2023 data was even greater than that recorded for Spain as a whole, with spending increasing by 36.3% compared to 2022, reaching €868 million.