There are just 24 hours to go before a crucial parliamentary vote on the Spanish government’s new housing decrees – and the mood could hardly be more febrile.
Elsa Ibáñez Editor-in-Chief, Spanien Press
For those who live in Spain but do not follow the intricacies of Spanish politics every day, one rather extraordinary aspect of the story requires some explanation.
The fate of measures that could affect millions of tenants and landlords across Spain may ultimately depend on the MPs of Junts, the Catalan pro-independence party led by the exiled Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont.
Puigdemont was president of the Catalan government during the independence crisis of 2017. After the referendum ruled unconstitutional by Spain’s Constitutional Court and the subsequent unilateral declaration of independence, he left Spain for Belgium.
He has remained one of the most controversial – and remarkably influential – figures in Spanish politics ever since.
And therein lies the political paradox.
Nearly a decade later, a politician who remains outside Spain can once again wield considerable influence over the parliamentary arithmetic in Madrid.
Puigdemont himself will not, of course, be casting a vote in the Congreso de los Diputados tomorrow. What matters are the votes of MPs belonging to his party, Junts per Catalunya.
To understand why a relatively small Catalan party holds such influence, one has to go back to Spain’s 2023 general election.
Pedro Sánchez and his Socialist party emerged without a parliamentary majority. To secure another term as prime minister, Sánchez needed the backing of several smaller regional, nationalist and pro-independence parties – including Junts.
Ever since, his government has repeatedly been forced to negotiate its way through crucial parliamentary votes.
The curious relationship between Junts and Sánchez
For foreign observers, there is another important point to understand: Junts is not a party of the left.
It is a Catalan nationalist and pro-independence party whose positions, particularly on economic matters, have frequently placed it closer to the liberal-conservative or centre-right tradition.
In other words, it is hardly the natural political partner of a Socialist-led government in Madrid.
And yet Junts has repeatedly provided Sánchez with crucial votes at decisive moments.
The most obvious example came in 2023, when its support helped Sánchez secure another term as prime minister. That support followed an agreement between the Socialists and Junts that included the controversial amnesty law for people involved in the Catalan independence process.
Here lies one of the great paradoxes of contemporary Spanish politics.
A party whose economic instincts often sit uncomfortably alongside those of the Spanish left has nevertheless helped enable decisions vital to the political survival of Sánchez’s government.
That does not mean Junts automatically supports Sánchez.
During this parliament it has also helped defeat government initiatives and, on a number of economic and housing-related issues, has voted alongside the conservative People’s Party and, at times, Vox.
Junts belongs neither to the government’s leftwing bloc nor to the conventional opposition.
It negotiates issue by issue, repeatedly linking its support in Madrid to its own Catalan demands and political agreements.
And that is precisely why tomorrow’s vote remains so difficult to call.
Because this time the issue is one of the most politically explosive in Spain: housing.
The government has introduced two separate royal decree-laws containing significant changes to housing and rental policy.
They touch on rental contracts, extensions, protections against eviction and other rules governing the housing market.
For days, landlords, tenants, lawyers, property professionals and campaign groups have been trying to establish precisely what the new rules could mean for them.
And this, for me, is where the real problem begins.
We are dealing with one of the most important economic and social issues facing Spain, yet once again we have witnessed negotiations continuing almost until the last minute, complicated legal texts, technical corrections and considerable uncertainty.
Decrees put together in haste, poorly communicated and, in places, drafted in such a way that even professionals are left debating what individual provisions actually mean in practice.
That is no way to create a long-term housing policy.
But even if we put the political process to one side, a much bigger question remains.
Will these measures solve Spain’s housing crisis?
My answer is straightforward:
I do not believe they will.
Spain has a problem that no decree can make disappear with the stroke of a pen.
In the places where people most want – and need – to live, there simply are not enough homes.
In recent years, the number of new households has grown considerably faster than the supply of newly completed homes. The Bank of Spain has repeatedly highlighted the widening imbalance between household formation and housing supply.
The consequences are hardly mysterious.
More people are competing for an insufficient number of homes.
And when demand grows much faster than supply, prices come under pressure.
We can extend rental contracts.
We can impose new obligations on landlords.
We can change taxation.
We can tighten the rules governing holiday lets and seasonal rentals.
We can pass one decree today and another six months from now.
But none of those measures automatically builds the homes Spain desperately needs.
And surely that is the conversation we ought finally to be having.
Why is Spain not building enough homes?
Why can planning and building permits take so long?
Why is developable land so constrained in many of the areas under greatest pressure?
Why does Spain still have an inadequate stock of public and social housing?
Why are there not stronger incentives to put homes on the long-term rental market?
And why does so much of the political debate continue to focus on regulating the housing stock that already exists rather than ensuring that substantially more homes are made available?
Of course, a modern welfare state has a duty to protect people who find themselves in genuine hardship.
Nobody should end up on the street because they suddenly lose their job, become seriously ill or face another demonstrable social emergency.
But there is another, uncomfortable question that deserves to be asked:
How much responsibility for the state’s social policy can reasonably be transferred to private landlords?
If a private owner begins to believe that they can rent out a property but cannot reliably know when, or under what circumstances, they will be able to recover possession of it, some will reach a very simple conclusion.
They will stop offering their properties as long-term rentals.
And that risks removing still more homes from the conventional rental market.
That is precisely the vicious circle Spain should be trying to avoid.
Tomorrow, we will have an answer – politically, at least
Tomorrow we will discover what happens.
We will see how Junts votes.
We will see which of the two measures secures enough support in parliament.
They may survive.
They may fall.
But one thing will remain unchanged the following morning:
Spain will still have a serious housing crisis.
That crisis did not arise because Spain had too few decrees.
Nor will it disappear because Madrid passes another one.
Until Spain substantially increases housing supply, speeds up planning and licensing procedures, makes more land available, expands its stock of public housing and provides a stable and predictable framework for the private rental market, we will continue treating the symptoms rather than the underlying problem.
And the irony of the present situation is difficult to ignore.
With just 24 hours to go before a decision that could affect millions of people who live, work, rent or own property in Spain, attention is once again turning to Carles Puigdemont.
An exiled Catalan leader outside Spain.
A handful of MPs.
And another parliamentary vote whose outcome remains uncertain until almost the final moment.
This is Spanish housing politics in the autumn of 2026. And perhaps that, in itself, is part of the problem.
Elsa Ibáñez
Editor-in-Chief, Spanien Press
