In the current housing crisis, it seems to me that there is an unsympathetic component of urbanism and architecture that no one dares to confront but that permeates everything; it filters into all urban conversations and debates, and it is very frightening. The feared speculation.Speculation is not good for anyone, ask the developers. Having to buy land at exorbitant prices, never knowing if the selling price is adequate or if you are being ripped off, having multiple abandoned plots of land in cities waiting for years to pass and demand to increase to sell them for triple what they cost is what most damages citizens' trust in urban planning. Hearing about demographic growth and the paralysis of protected housing construction is unsettling and makes any personal housing decision even more irrational. Laws have been getting thicker, but it does not seem that there is now more control and public mechanisms to deal with speculation.In 1933, the First Congress of Architects in the Catalan Language was held, organized by the Association of Architects of Catalonia, with the presence of 129 architects from Valencia to Mallorca, delegates from the Corps of Municipal Architects of Spain, the GATCPAC, and the Association of Architecture Students. The Congress had an important political component, the objective of which was to establish the foundations of the laws that would regulate urban planning and housing in republican Catalonia. Francesc Macià did not attend, but he sent Joan Casanovas, and the inaugural session was held at the Palau de la Generalitat.What seems remarkable about that initiative is that, beyond their individual offices and the difficulty of generating particular commissions, the hundred architects were able to agree on a synthetic text with concrete proposals for a new urban planning law, social policy for working-class neighborhoods and containment of speculation in the neighborhoods, in addition to proposing changes in the teaching of architecture and betting on school architecture.

The price of resale homes in Catalonia has registered its largest increase since records began: in the third quarter of this year, it soared by 11.7% compared to the previous year. However, this surge has not been enough to surpass the peak prices recorded during the housing bubble at the beginning of the century. It is the only housing indicator that has not yet reached 2007 levels. This is according to the latest data from the Housing Price Index (HPI) published this Friday by the National Institute of Statistics (INE). In Catalonia, the price of new homes grew by 7.6%, well below the most dynamic quarters – the first three months of 2015 saw a 12% increase – and overall – combining new and resale homes – it rose by 11.3% in the third quarter, below the levels recorded in the first half of the year.

Housing prices in both Catalonia and Spain as a whole continue to rise, and in the first quarter they registered their largest increase in 18 years, according to data from the Housing Price Index (IPV), published this Friday by the National Institute of Statistics (INE).

Housing prices are already growing at rates more typical of a world without pandemic. According to data published Wednesday by the Spanish National Statistics Institute (INE), buying a home in Catalonia in June was 3.2% more expensive than a year ago and 2.5% more than three months earlier. All this coinciding with a period that several professional sectors involved in the real estate market have been celebrated as the best in sales in fourteen years.