A good book on housing is by Javier Gil, Generación inquilina, published by Capitán Swing. It is because it is written in plain language and grounds some of the forecasts that Saskia Sassen and Richard Sennett had made in the case of post-bubble Spain. The author explains that the contradictions in housing matters in the Western world begin with the neoliberal policies of dispossession of the working class, with a battery of decisions that favored rampant speculation and the preference for the accumulation of wealth, which reversed the trend of stable rents towards the purchase of housing for investment. He connects it with the well-known theses of Thomas Piketty: when housing is an investment good, it becomes inaccessible to the majority and patrimonial income grows above labor income.However, in addition, Gil quantifies the magnitude of the tragedy in Spain: after 2007, investment funds such as Blackstone, Lone Star, Oaktree, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs or Cerberus bought hundreds of thousands of homes from Spanish banks. Blackstone, Cerberus and Lone Star alone acquired 450,000 homes in Spain in a few operations. The giant Blackstone has bought large volumes of apartments in Spain, while in the rest of the world it has more diversified assets. This deserves a study, because, simultaneously, many local developers have been lost.Meanwhile, the State allocated 72 billion to the bailout of banks, and 51 billion for the creation of Sareb. Gil asks an important question: what would have happened if the largest mobilization of public funds in history had been used to buy the homes obtained through evictions?

Sumar has initiated a round of contacts to secure sufficient support to validate the extension of rental agreements, which is to be voted on in Congress on April 28. This is an essential step for the decree-law approved by the Spanish government following the Iran war on housing matters to remain in force. Yolanda Díaz's party assures that negotiations are open with Junts and they see "water in the pool," but Míriam Nogueras's party is by no means in line with this: they maintain their 'no' to the extension of rental agreements and have presented an alternative in housing policies to address the crisis generated by the conflict in the Middle East, which directly clashes with what the Spanish government is doing. The Junts members, therefore, would only be open to discussion if the PSOE and Sumar accept their "emergency" measures and withdraw their decree.

In the exhibition Housing the Majorities, Barcelona 1860-2010, curated by Manel Guàrdia and Maribel Roselló, from the Barcelona Housing Museum, the MUHBA's headquarters in the old low-cost housing of Bon Pastor, a poster from the 60s can be seen from a construction company showing multiple residential developments on a map of Barcelona. The poster is titled “Pisos pisos pisos pisos” (Flats flats flats flats) and largely hints at how the response to the problem of access to housing and shantytowns was given from the late 1950s through the Social Urgency Plan of Barcelona of 1958. This plan, focused on the maximum production of "flats" possible in the cheapest way (through the so-called

For the first time in more than two years of conflict, the foreign fund New Amsterdam Developers (NAD) is opening up to dialogue in the face of the crisis in the Sant Agustí street block, which it intends to use for co-housing. The ombudsman of Barcelona, David Bondia, announced this Friday that the fund has asked the court to postpone the eviction of Txema Escorsa, which was to be attempted again this Wednesday after neighborhood "pressure" managed to halt a first eviction three weeks ago.

For the first time in more than two years of conflict, the foreign fund New Amsterdam Developers (NAD) is opening up to dialogue in the face of the crisis over the Sant Agustí street block in Vila de Gràcia, which it wants to convert into coliving. The ombudsman of Barcelona, David Bondia, announced this Friday that the fund has asked the court to postpone the eviction of Txema Escorsa, which was to be attempted again this Wednesday after three weeks ago neighborhood pressure managed to halt a first eviction.

In this Sunday's newspaper, Àlex Gutiérrez interviewed the comedian Maria Rovira, known as Oye Sherman, with whom I had the good fortune to meet doing radio a few years ago. I remember how impressed I was that such a young girl showed such great interest in language and culture, and sparked a quick and funny mind without any desire to grab the spotlight.

Gasoline will go up. Rents will become more expensive, salaries will stagnate. You will have everything much more complicated, my son: I didn't expect it either. Sometimes it's hard for me to talk to you about the possibilities that opened up for us before, when the social elevator worked, when having a degree and a master's degree seemed like a guarantee of everything. Current volatility has its advantages, for sure: you are less tied down, you learn more things, you get by and you depend more on your own adaptability. I mean, let salaries stagnate, man: they are not you. Don't you stagnate, nor let yourself stagnate. I know we all need a ground that doesn't move much, to dare to change when we feel like it and not because the flames catch us. But the ground is not you. Decadence is not you, minimum wage is not you. You'll have to work hard and not trust anything, that's for sure. When did things go wrong? I suppose with the 2008 crisis and with the coronavirus, and in our country with the Process, but they are not you either. They are facts, data, circumstances, the weatherman. The rawness with which democracy cracks will force you to have little faith in your rights (which you will have to defend more than would be normal) and to concentrate more on your duties (surviving without harming, basically). But the system is not you, bankruptcy is not you, fragility and mediocrity are not you. And as for the social elevator, my son, don't think so either: everyone knows that in reality it was always stairs.

What exactly makes a neighborhood's density desirable? I lived for many years in Barcelona's Eixample, and it wasn't until I left that I realized the exceptional volume of shops, offices, activities, institutions, hotels, restaurants, cars, pedestrians, and goods that circulate. It is very difficult to reproduce this dynamism in a new construction neighborhood, so different from the residential neighborhoods of Europe or the streets of houses between party walls in Maresme. There were few facilities and green areas, but I never missed them until I had daughters. I went to university libraries, to the municipal swimming pools by the beach, and to the cinema in Gràcia and the Gothic Quarter. The city never stopped and there was always some shop window well lit at night, as if to highlight the delicate details of the cornices of the balconies or the reliefs of the facades.On Còrsega, Lepant, Industria, and Padilla streets, there is an island of houses with homogeneous architecture on all plots: the same windows, the same heights, and the same proportions. If the entire Ensanche had been built with the same architecture, I think it would be unbearable. It is the diversity of colors of the stucco, from earthy to reddish to green, that makes us change our point of view at every corner. Cities are read involuntarily. While walking, people notice the balconies, the rhythms of the vertical windows, and the textures, from the plinths to the unique finishes that crown the facades. And then there are the flowers, the curtains, the shutters, the colors of the lamps at night, and so many other things that make us find a very familiar language in the Eixample, despite the incredible built density of a large part of the blocks.

A bright orange Lamborghini speeds up. It's dazzling and makes a deafening noise. It parks in front of you and a young guy gets out, with a slicked-back blonde quiff and well-worked biceps, wearing a Gucci polo shirt worth over 1,000 euros, an appearance he completes with a gold ring and a Rolex watch. You've been following him on social media for a while and admire the money he makes and how he spends it. The cars, the houses, the outfits, the jewelry. You envy his trips around the world. Colombia, Costa Rica, the United Arab Emirates, Japan. You've been taking his advice on investing, on being a winner, for a long time. What is success if it's not what he does? You even set aside some of the little money you have to enjoy the privilege of having him all to yourself for a few hours, so he can explain how he's done it. He gets out of the car and calls you 'crack'. And, automatically, you feel like a crack. He fascinates you. He abducts you. He captivates you. He makes you fall in love.

The Euribor continues to make mortgages more expensive, one of the consequences of the effects of the war in the Middle East. This indicator, which is the benchmark for variable-interest home loans, but also affects new ones entering the market, closed March at an average of 2.565%, with the largest monthly increase in three years after reaching 2.870% on the last day of the month. As a consequence of this trend, holders of variable-interest mortgages with annual reviews will suffer the first increase in their installments since April 2024 because this month's Euribor is higher than that of a year ago, which was 2.398%.

Since last Wednesday, if Txema Escorsa, 34 years old and a struggling secondary school teacher, is still in his home, at Sant Agustí street in Vila de Gràcia, it is because that day, very early, an anonymous crowd, shoulder to shoulder, prevented the judicial procession and judicial device from carrying out the task of kicking him out of his home. Everything stopped at street level and via a human wall, and this is called social unionism, civil disobedience, and community defense. The undeniable evidence clarifies, with lights and shorthand, that the eviction was only blocked by the massive mobilization of the people. That is to say, Txema was saved by the popular initiative of the Tenants Union and not by any calm and severe political, judicial, or police decision. And that the president of the Generalitat even sent a tweet of support – although it will take more than a tweet. The battle against the global market is always local and the image showed hundreds of neighbors against a foreign vulture fund located in New York, which violates and breaks current legislation and which is impudently making prohibited colivings for room rentals, to which it already charges per room much more than Txema pays for an entire apartment. Paradoxically, the main representatives of the speculators were, last Wednesday, the judge and the police – that is, the institutional system – who came to accelerate the expulsion of residents. And from here the creature cries. The judicial procession has left in writing that it will try again on April 15th. The people, undoubtedly, will too. The same day that Txema was resisting at his home thanks to active neighborhood solidarity, Barcelona City Council decided to take advantage of it to evict 130 impoverished people from a vacant lot in La Sagrera. Without any prior notice and without offering them any alternative other than to get out and disperse them throughout the city. Everything happened –words and deeds of urban eloquence, in which the name never makes the thing– under the protection of the alleged Pla Endreça and next to, wouldn't you know it, the Pont del Treball Digne, which the expelled do not have in the open. However, the Quart Món entity was there supporting them. These days a municipal campaign supposedly denounces the uncivil "scoundrels". But what is "shameful" is that the shantytown returns to the city –53 settlements with 299 people as of December 2025– and that so "little" is done to reverse it. Or that the little that is done is to drive them away to an even worse place. Scoundrels, indeed. After all, here in Barcelona as in Badalona, we should insist much more that the different management and narratives –the packaging and propaganda– in no case alter the final product: the abandonment of the kick in the backside. The effect ends up being the same, whether with Albiol's aporophobic shouting, or with Collboni's apparently sanitizing neutrality. One and the other confuse the fight against extreme poverty with the fight against the poor. And that's how we are. Thanks to all the entities involved for years in the fight for the eradication of homelessness, from the Fundació Arrels to the Hospital de Campanya of the parish of Santa Anna. A civil network that has been crying out for years for a law of transitional and urgent measures, still in infinite process and pending approval.

The Ministry of Social Rights, Consumer Affairs and the 2030 Agenda sent a letter this Monday to large real estate companies and investment funds to inform them that the contracts of their tenants that expire between March 22, 2026, and December 22, 2027, must be extended as long as they request it. The text sent by the government was addressed to thirteen large holders who concentrate more than 100,000 homes throughout Spain, as reported by the ministry led by Pablo Bustinduy. Thus, the letter reminds these companies that the extension of rental contracts will be mandatory once the tenant requests it, according to the recent royal decree-law approved by the Council of Ministers, which currently does not have sufficient parliamentary majority to be validated in Congress the recent royal decree-law approved by the Council of Ministers and which for the moment does not have a sufficient parliamentary majority to be validated in Congress.

Barcelona took another step this Friday to try to protect the habitual use of housing. The plenary session definitively approved with the votes of the PSC, Barcelona en Comú, and ERC a modification of the Metropolitan General 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 will allow the city council to deploy its own regulation in the future to combat seasonal rentals and business models such as cohousing.

The Catalan Finance Institute (ICF), the public bank of the Generalitat, has granted to date 846 loans to young people aged 18 to 35 to obtain the down payment for an apartment. The average granted is 36,332 euros and an average housing price of 189,908 euros with an average age of beneficiaries of 29.4 years, according to data presented by the Secretary General of Economy and President of the ICF's governing board, Juli Fernández, and the entity's CEO, Vanessa Servera.

The countdown to the vote on the decree with housing measures approved by the Spanish government to face the economic impact of the war in the Middle East has triggered a call from social groups and left-wing parties to tenants to demand "now" the extraordinary extension of up to two years of the terms and conditions of the contract in case it ends before December 31, 2027. This is one of the flagship measures of the decree which, pending the result of the vote in Congress, is in force (the temporal limit for it to be voted on is 30 business days from its publication in the "Official State Gazette).

This weekend I passed by the settlement that was evicted today in La Sagrera, where the AVE high-speed train station is being built. It was heartbreaking: single-person shacks built with corrugated iron sheets covered with plastic tarps held down with stones; clothes hanging to dry on lines tied to branches; electrical wires, the remains of bonfires, shopping carts, and trash everywhere, with an abundance of plastic bottles and jugs. The occupants came and went through holes they had easily cut in the wire fence. Frightened neighbors, a feeling of insecurity, and more than one theft. They had been there for months, with Adif, the landowner, doing nothing.

Two residents of Sabadell have filed a lawsuit against Sareb —the so-called bad bank— after the entity is demanding more than three million euros from them for a mortgage they never took out, neither directly nor voluntarily. According to the lawsuit, which has already been accepted for processing, the affected parties—now deceased—never received the money they are now being asked to return. In fact, as the lawsuit explains, the loan was granted to a third party: the real estate developer Wilder Bay SL, which subsequently went into administration. From then on, the mortgage debt was subject to several financial transfers until it reached Sareb, which is now demanding repayment from the daughters of the deceased neighbors, aged 79 and 74.

On a vacant lot near the Treball Digne bridge in Barcelona's Sant Andreu district, carts piled high with suitcases, bicycles, and other personal belongings are piled up. The owners have hastily gathered their possessions and remain nearby, sitting silently on the bridge itself or at its ends, or gathered on benches, waiting to find out where they can go for shelter. They are more than a hundred people who lived in two shantytown settlements located on land owned by Adif (the Spanish railway infrastructure manager), which a large contingent of Barcelona's Guardia Urbana (municipal police) and the Mossos d'Esquadra (Catalan police) evicted and dispersed this Wednesday at 8:00 a.m. The Barcelona City Council has reported that the operation was prompted by a Fire Department report concluding that there was a "very serious and imminent" risk to the people living in these conditions, leading to the decision to intervene "urgently," as there was a "risk to their lives." According to Barcelona Fire Chief Sebastià Massagué, a fire broke out last weekend in one of the shacks. "The report simply emphasizes the safety of the people and highlights the risk of anyone else being trapped," he said. 126 people were evacuated from the shacks, located on a plot of land in the Sagrera area, four of whom were women, according to Sant Andreu councilor Marta Villanueva. There were no minors among them. The area, with about forty shacks, contained combustible materials, including waste, electrical appliances, tents, propane tanks, portable stoves, and small fires, all of which increased the risk of fire and, therefore, rapid spread. In fact, Massagué said that some people were even sleeping in an electrical substation. "We wanted to prevent further casualties," he explained.

The Association of Rental Property Owners (Asval) announced on Tuesday the creation of a permanent commission in Catalonia. During the presentation, Asval asserted that they need greater legal certainty and a more ""Clear, stable, and predictable." In fact, the association's new delegate in Catalonia, Carlos Muñoz, has asserted that this lack of legal certainty is what, in many cases, leads to "conflict" between landlords and tenants. "Landlords and tenants share a common interest: that the system works," Muñoz affirmed. "Without landlords, there is no supply; without tenants, there is no one to request housing."

After the clash with the PSOE within the council of ministers On Friday, Sumar is now focusing all its pressure on Junts and the PP to ratify the extension of rental contracts and the limitation on price increases. This is the second decree approved in addition to the one on tax cuts: it has been in effect since Sunday, but it needs the approval of Congress—with the decisive vote of Junts—to remain valid. Early Monday morning, in an interview on RNE, the Second Vice President of the Spanish government, Yolanda Díaz, made it clear that the vote will be "the last day" to extend the validity period as much as possible to validate the measure. Thus, Moncloa will have thirty working days to bring this decree-law to the lower house, which places the parliamentary review in the first week of May. "The three right-wing parties have to explain why they are harming the citizens of our country," Díaz said. Shortly afterwards, on TVE, the Minister of Social Rights, Pablo Bustinduy, called for the "biggest pressure campaign" to get the lower house to give the green light.