New public housing developments and greener, more accessible streets designed for pedestrians. Also, facilities that recover heritage and reconnect neighborhoods. Around the Llobregat and Besòs rivers, riparian areas that are being renaturalized to gain biodiversity and resilience. These are some of the actions with which the Barcelona Metropolitan Area (AMB) is shaping the metropolis of the future: a network of projects that not only build or renovate, but also adapt the territory to an increasingly demanding urban context.

The real estate franchise Tecnocasa has turned to the thousand offices it has throughout Spain to analyze the housing market situation and conclude that "clearly, there is a change in cycle", in the words of the company's CEO, Paolo Boarini. "It is very difficult for prices to continue rising," he warned at the presentation of the report prepared by the Tecnocasa-Pompeu Fabra University (UPF) Chair this Wednesday.

When there are just over 48 hours left for Parliament to vote on whether to begin processing the Comuns' proposed law to prohibit speculative housing purchases, the property owners' association Som Habitatge has presented a legal report arguing that the regulation is unconstitutional.

More than three years after the state housing law came into force, the Generalitat has fined three large holders for the first time – meaning owners of more than five homes each – for non-compliance with the regulations, as reported by the Efe agency this Friday. In response to questions from ARA, the Department of Territory and Housing has not specified what type of non-compliance it is (whether it is, for example, for violating the rent cap).

Colonial SFL, until now focused on the office markets of Barcelona, Madrid, and Paris, has overcome one of its pending tasks: setting foot in Berlin. For some time now, the top executives of the Catalan real estate company, Juan José Brugera (president) and Pere Viñolas (CEO) had expressed interest to bring its business model to the German capital.

The Generalitat's flagship housing plan —and arguably one of the most significant of the legislature— is to add 50,000 protected homes to the public stock by 2030. Salvador Illa's strategy involves identifying plots of land ready for construction and then offering them to municipalities and developers. This Wednesday, the Government has put out to tender 16 of the 59 plots with capacity for fewer than 20 homes each that the executive has included in its plan. As ARA has learned, this week it will release 8 more of the same type, bringing the total to 24 plots.

After three consecutive increases (March, April, and May), the daily one-year Euribor in June, the main reference for variable interest rate mortgages, has moderated and experienced a slight decrease compared to the previous month. The indicator closed the month at 2.728%, and therefore, an average in June of 2.798%, below the 2.8% of the previous month. In any case, the amount paid by mortgagors will continue to rise, with an increase of 66.40 euros per month and 796.8 euros per year on average, as it is compared to the 2.081% that existed a year ago.

Less bureaucracy, more administrative agility, and facilitating urban planning and land transformation. This is the recipe from the National Commission on Markets and Competition (CNMC) to increase housing supply and, therefore, reduce housing prices.

For a long time, housing has become one of the country's main challenges. Often, however, the debate is reduced to figures. Those that refer to how many apartments need to be built. Those that tell us about the increase in the price per square meter, whether for purchase or rent. Even those that talk about how many more people can live in a specific place. There is also an approach to the issue from another perspective. What are these homes like? Have they changed much compared to how they were built twenty years ago? What should the buildings of the future be like?

Catalonia has a housing supply problem. This was highlighted by economist Carme Poveda, director of the Economic Memory of Catalonia 2025, a study that Catalan chambers of commerce have been producing for 61 years. This year the report includes a monograph on housing with articles by new experts. According to Poveda, "there is consensus" that there is a supply problem. In this regard, he highlighted that since 2021, 200,000 new homes have been created in Catalonia, while only 62,000 new dwellings have been completed.

Access to housing is one of the main concerns of citizens, and its high prices translate into a strong impact on pockets. According to the Household Budget Survey of the National Statistics Institute (INE), housing-related expenses were those that grew the most during the past year (+5.8%), and already represent 33.2% of families' budgets.

In late July 2025, Sigrid received the first notification from the Barcelona City Council. When she read it, she began to tremble and had an anxiety attack. Forty-five years after buying the apartment, the council of the Catalan capital informed her that her home could not be used as a dwelling, as municipal archives state that the building has industrial use. Like her, the sixty or so residents of this building on Rosselló street – in the Eixample Left – have lived in limbo ever since. "My first lawyer told me: 'You could come home and find everything sealed, and not be able to enter. They can kick you out of your home,'" recounts Sigrid. From the City Council, however, they assure that efforts are being made to avoid this extreme.

What happens when women take to the streets? This is what the exhibition Vindran les dones. 150 anys de lluites als carrers de Barcelona, which can be seen at the Barcelona History Museum (Muhba) in Plaça del Rei until September 13, attempts to answer. The exhibition recovers the invisible thread that unites 19th-century anarchists with 21st-century young women who claim the right to decent housing, all through the eyes of some eighty writers, artists, and activists who have lived in the Catalan capital.

The number of mortgages on housing in Catalonia reached 7,506 signatures during the past month of April, with a year-on-year increase of 18.5%. It is the April with the most housing mortgages signed since 2010, according to data published this Monday by the National Statistics Institute (INE).

The data and figures on the situation of the housing market, inaccessible for both purchase and rent for a large part of the population, paint a distressing picture. One of the latest was the annual report by the Bank of Spain, which, in addition to reflecting the effort families have to make to pay for their living space and the risk this poses to growth, once again brings to the fore the need to increase supply. On the one hand, it calculates a deficit of 700,000 homes, which continues to rise. This is the figure that should be put on the market to curb price increases. But it turns out that there are at the same time 900,000 completed apartments throughout Spain, representing 3.3% of the entire housing stock, which are in the hands of non-resident foreigners or are intended for tourism, instead of being put on the market as residential supply.

Begur is a bucolic town with cobbled streets, restaurants, shops, and crystal-clear beaches. It has more than 4,200 registered inhabitants and, in the last ten years, has incorporated almost 4,800 tourist apartment places, practically double what it had until then. For each inhabitant, there are 2.27 beds for visitors reserved only in houses. Naut d'Aran leads the ranking of municipalities with the most tourist apartment beds per inhabitant – the proportion rises to 3.67 apartment places per inhabitant – followed by Port de la Selva (3.3) and Pals (3).

Antonio has been living with his apartment propped up for four and a half months, right on Gran Via in Barcelona. At the end of January, the ceiling of his room collapsed due to water leaks, and the Fire Department recommended keeping the props in place until a definitive repair could be made. A few weeks later, the same thing happened in the hallway, and shortly after, in another essential room of the house, the bathroom. The property owner fixed his bathroom, but this week the props are still holding up the beams in the bedroom and the hallway.

They sat down in front of the enormous window, in the only two armchairs in the room. Two white leather and wood armchairs, matching the footrest. The views were spectacular. They had recently moved into the house of their dreams. A moving company took care of everything. In fact, with the move they took the opportunity to clean up and get rid of weight, both physically and emotionally. Neither travel guides nor dictionaries made sense, everything was already on the internet; nor were the books they had already read. Nor the CDs. Suddenly, no dust, no silverfish, no mold. They would live in a space of glass, wood, and concrete. Energy efficiency A.

The Spanish economy is holding its ground despite the war in the Middle East, or at least that's what the Bank of Spain projects. The supervisory body estimates that it will grow by 2.3% in 2026 and 1.7% in 2027, as published this Thursday, thus maintaining the growth forecast from last March unchanged. At that time, however, only a few weeks had passed since the attack by the United States and Israel on Iran had passed since the attack by the United States and Israel on Iran. However, despite seeming to save face in a context of strong global uncertainty, there are some "structural problems" that could shake economic activity in the State, among which, once again, access to housing stands out: "It can lead to significant macroeconomic and social effects," according to the Annual Report of 2025Annual Report of 2025 published this Thursday by the supervisory body.

A new conflict front is opening in the La Mina neighborhood of Sant Adrià de Besòs. This morning, the Mossos d'Esquadra evicted the first three families out of the 58 that are expected to be removed in total from buildings occupied since 2017 on La Mina avenue. More evictions are planned for June 22, 25, and 29; and so on, until the building is emptied. The reason, according to the administration, is that these publicly owned apartments were built to house "the residents of the Venus building, from the same neighborhood,, and are now needed because the demolition of the building — presented as the key piece for the neighborhood's transformation — is finally planned for 2028..