11,000 applicants for 238 apartments: Barcelona raffles off its largest public housing development

BarcelonaBarcelona will be raffling off its largest public housing development this Thursday at noon. At 12 noon this afternoon, the 11,243 families—and other household units—registered in the drawing for the apartments in the impressive Illa Glòries will be waiting for the event organized by the city council to announce the winners. The event can be followed via a link published on the Housing Department website. The municipal government expects the first tenants to begin arriving at the building in the summer.

Located in the block formed by Gran Via de las Corts Catalanas and Carrer des Encants Vells, Carrer des Castillejos, and Plaça de les Glòries itself, the development consists of four buildings with a total of 238 one-, two-, and three-bedroom apartments. Of these, 88 will be allocated under affordable and social rental schemes, and 113 under building rights, ensuring that they will always remain part of the public housing stock. There will also be 32 apartments for people affected by urban expropriation, and another five reserved for the Emergency Management Board.

The promotion has generated enormous excitement. When the housing allocation process began in October with the presentation of the call for applications and the opening of the application process, the flood of applications from people registered in the Barcelona Registry of Applicants for Social Housing was immediate. Once the objections have been resolved, 11,243 cohabitation units will participate in the drawing, distributed across three rounds: 2,924 for affordable rental housing, 6,047 for social rental housing, and 2,272 for housing under building rights.

For affordable rental apartments, prices will range from €415 per month to €748 per month for the most expensive homes, depending on the square footage. Apartments range in size from 45 to 80 square meters and have between one and three bedrooms. For apartments with building rights, the cost will be €2,400 per square meter.

First neighbors in summer

Once the lottery is complete, the City Council's goal is for the first residents to be able to move into the new apartments by summer, once the first affordable and social rental contracts have been finalized. Those awarded with building rights will take a little longer to arrive because the process is more complex.

The apartments are distributed across four separate buildings: two blocks of six and seven floors facing the Eixample district, and two taller ones, with nine and eleven floors, overlooking the Glòries district. Regarding the types of apartments, the development offers a varied selection of one-, two-, and three-bedroom apartments, and includes eleven apartments adapted for people with reduced mobility. The residential complex also includes 14 commercial premises located on the ground floor and a parking lot with capacity for 112 vehicles and 282 bicycles.

In recent months, Barcelona's First Deputy Mayor, Laia Bonet, has hailed Glòries Island as "one of the city's largest public housing developments" and has highlighted that it will be able to accommodate up to 800 people. "It's one of the great examples of the Barcelona we want," she added, emphasizing that this is the "largest public housing development currently under construction" in the city. Bonet also noted that around Glòries Island, around 840 public housing units will ultimately be built, including the Glòries Island development and others.