The 2008 economic crisis ended, at least theoretically, in 2013. It was the last year in which the Spanish economy recorded negative growth. The consequences of the recession still persist today, and are exacerbated by the more recent rise in price of a very specific group of products in the shopping basket. They are fundamentally two: housing and food, as made clear by the Generalitat in the Social Report 2025. These two elements are also the main drivers of the general strike called for November 11th.

Enric Aragonès (Reus, 1991) arrives directly from work—in a job that has nothing to do with activism—at the space in the central headquarters of the University of Barcelona from where the Sindicat de Llogateres (Tenants' Union) is organizing the general strike of November 11. Between photographs, he is grateful that we are conducting an in-depth interview to discuss the call to action on the eve of the elections, in a fast-paced world where current events usually move from one statement to the next.

Anna Puigdevall (Barcelona, 1968) has worked her entire professional life in the business sector, after studying physics, and for less than two years she has been part of the property owners' association Som Habitatge. They claim that they are financed through member dues and donations, and that they do not receive resources from any large real estate management company.

Next Wednesday we are called to a general strike to demand better wages, affordable housing, and measures against the rising cost of living. And this at a time when Catalonia is recording one of the lowest unemployment rates since 2008, the minimum wage has increased by almost 66% since 2018 and monetary poverty has decreased in recent years. And yet, many families continue to have difficulty making ends meet. How is this explained?

Barcelona City Council rules out, for the time being, installing Christmas lights in Plaça Catalunya. The decision was made due to the ongoing encampment for the right to housing that occupies the space, as reported by El Periódico and confirmed by municipal sources to the ACN. These sources state that for now "the City Council will not install Christmas lighting in Plaça Catalunya." They also indicate that the council is not considering installing the designer lights planned for the square anywhere else in the city, as they were designed "specifically" for this space.

Although Rosa R.R. has lived in Martorell for years and has requested to register on the municipal census on numerous occasions, the City Council has always prevented her from doing so. Because of this, she filed a lawsuit against the local government, and now the High Court of Justice of Catalonia (TSJC) has ruled in her favor. The court declares that the municipal refusal to process her registration application, despite her demonstrating that she lives in the municipality, violates the fundamental right to equality. The ruling, which was reported by Nació Digital, recalls that registration in the municipal census is an obligation of local administrations and that its purpose is to certify the place where a person actually resides, regardless of whether they have a rental contract, a property title, or an authorization from the property owner.

The ball is back in the court of the Barcelona City Council. On Tuesday, the Barcelona Urban Planning sub-commission –made up of representatives from the Generalitat and the council– gave the green light to the modification of the General Metropolitan Plan (PGM) to establish that the habitual and permanent use of housing is the "priority" in the city and that it takes precedence over temporary use. A legal umbrella that now allows the council to deploy its own regulation to combat seasonal rentals and business models such as co-living.

Belén López (Masies de Voltregà, 1976) has been the general secretary of CCOO of Catalonia for a year and a half. The union leader assures ARA that she expects the strike to be a success, as the public feels “challenged”. López asserts that, on the 11th, CCOO will play a key role in stopping the main Catalan workplaces: "We will steer the closure of companies and, as is to be expected, we will participate in all activities that take place with the prominence that comes with being the leading union in Catalonia".

Two years after the entry into force of rent caps, the Generalitat fiercely defends the measure: "It is working as planned," asserts the Minister for the sector, Sílvia Paneque. Rents across the country have risen by 1% since the first quarter of 2024 – just before the regulation was applied – according to the deposits held by Incasòl. At the same time, contrary to the premises of the real estate sector, the Generalitat guarantees that "the regulation has not reduced supply," but rather turnover: families change housing less often and stay longer in the apartments they already occupy.

Spain is discussing how to intervene in the market to manage the existing housing stock while, in parallel –at least on paper– it is increasing supply with new construction. The decrees that triggered the 29-N election call put on the table the extension of leases, limiting price updates (and even freezing them), and prohibiting the eviction of vulnerable people without a housing alternative. On the other side of the border, Portugal is proposing a practically opposite formula to address one of the worst housing access crises (if not the worst) in the European Union.

My previous article started from the idea that what makes the housing problem most intractable is that there is an attempt to decouple it from its main cause, which is none other than immigration. The integration of immigration, on the other hand, is the main long-term problem we face, and it is intimately linked to the solution we provide for their access to housing.

Housing conditions the emancipation of young people, the decisions of families, and the ability of companies to attract workers. The response requires assuming public responsibilities and expanding supply. Seeking culprits among those who can provide savings, land, and the capacity to build will hardly bring us closer to a solution.

To save the budget, the PSC agreed to legally prohibit the speculative purchase of housing that the Comuns were advocating for. Four months have passed and the project remains stalled, with an unfavorable report from the Council of Statutory Guarantees and without the two partners managing to agree on a common solution to overcome the obstacles. What separates them?

The PP proposes 14 measures to build a million homes (it is not known if they are market-rate or affordable). One of the measures is the approval of a new land law that provides security for urban planning. Oh, how we have no memory. This formula was already tested and led to a regrettable involution of the precarious science of cities: between 1998 and 2006, 5.5 million homes were built in Spain by liberalizing land. In Catalonia, a territory equivalent to 3% of its surface area was urbanized; in Madrid, they ended up consuming 7.46% of the land of the entire region. And housing prices, despite the historical surplus of apartments, grew by 185%. When the bubble burst, it was not only the tenants who suffered: a good portion of the homeowners faced losses if they had to sell their homes because the correction in apartment prices deflated overnight. And who made a fortune? The owners of fields and rustic land on the outskirts of cities, who had been accumulating land where they knew planning would enable new neighborhoods. There must already be someone making selective purchases around the cities in case Feijóo finally becomes president.

This episode of the podcast Tocar sostre addresses the relationship between digitalization, coexistence, and housing, and how digital transformation influences our way of living and relating to each other. Participating in this episode are lawyer and university professor Eugènia Revilla, archaeologist and expert in culture and digital transformation Genís Roca, and architect and co-founder of 300,000 km/s Mar Santamaria. The discussion is moderated by journalist Gerard Pruna, head of the Barcelona area for the newspaper ARA.

Buyers from outside the State are losing weight in the housing market for the first time since 2023. Between January and June, they have acquired 9% fewer properties than during the same period in 2025, according to the Notarial Observatory of Catalonia. Even so, they still carry out almost two out of every ten purchases authorized in the country, 18.5%. In absolute terms, there are 10,293 operations.

With two weeks to go until the strike for housing access, the homeowners' union Som Habitatge has presented fifteen proposals to resolve the serious crisis the country is experiencing. Among others, the association, which defines itself as "the voice of the small owner", has demanded that one must own at least 100 properties to be considered a large holder.

The situation is contradictory in capital letters: while developers warn that the lack of land is one of the main impediments to the creation of new housing, the data show that there is an "overabundance" of vacant and stagnant land, which is not entering the market. Only in the municipalities declared a tense residential market zone (ZMRT) –that is, where policies such as caps are needed to facilitate access to housing in a context of high demand–, there is land to build 423,600 apartments on plots that are not yet part of the urban fabric, but are at its gates. Beforehand they must be urbanized or require changes of use, but the town councils, in their urban plans, already foresaw that housing would be built there.

A friend sends me a beautiful photograph of a banner hanging in France, with the streets full of protesters, where it reads: “The bourgeoisie will prepare for war, the youth prepare the future”. It is this constant tension between the pessimistic and self-interested vision of fear, that of blaming migrants or the growth of cities (can you imagine if our grandparents, in the sixties, had opposed the demographic trend?) and the responsibility of planning a somewhat more encouraging future that connects me with the great authors of European urban planning and architecture. Why get into the mud of projects and construction work, instead of settling for what is already there?

The third episode of the podcast Tocar sostre addresses the difficulties of access to housing and the challenges they pose for emancipation. Participants include Pol Casellas, architect and digital communicator; Jose Téllez, representative of Sostre Cívic; and Anna Puigdevall, general director of Som Habitatge. Moderated by Laura Casserres, ARA journalist specializing in housing.