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.

If the owner of your apartment has more than one rented property, it is likely that you have noticed the price hike more than the tenant of a landlord who has only one property on the market. In fact, according to a study by the Esade think tank published this Thursday, the more apartments an owner accumulates, the more they increase the monthly payments.

The rent cap has taken up almost all the media attention, but the declaration of a stressed residential market area (ZMRT) provides for other instruments to facilitate access to housing. This Wednesday, the Spanish government announced direct subsidies to these territories, as established by the state housing law: it intends to distribute 90 million euros among the five autonomous communities that have applied the measure. Of this figure, Catalonia will receive 60 million, as it concentrates 75% of the population living in an area where the housing market is stressed, and 85.5% of the municipalities.