In 2024, amid rising outrage at unaffordable housing, stagnant wages, and overtourism, Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez announced new rent control policies, a tax of up to 100% on nonresident property purchases, and a plan to build 15,000 new social housing units per year. Authorities in Barcelona, a hotbed of anti-tourism protest, linked the problem to the city’s booming Airbnb market, pledging to ban vacation rentals by 2028. Rents across the country nevertheless rose by 11% in the past year alone — and the roots of the crisis go deeper than tech companies or tourists.

Spain’s housing shortage stands at 600,000, and the gap between supply and demand is only widening; social housing represents just 2.5% of the housing stock, compared to a European average of 9%. The culprits include wealthy locals who let millions of second and third homes sit empty, as well as outside corporate interests. Madrid’s largest private owner of residential real estate is the private equity firm Blackstone, which is the most notorious of the big companies that have bought up hundreds of thousands of Spanish rental units since property values cratered during the 2008 financial crisis.

Yet Spaniards depend on tourism, even as it drives up prices in their cities: the industry accounts for 12.6% of Barcelona’s GDP and employs nearly 3 million people nationwide. “It’s a vicious circle,” one Barcelona resident said, “but the root of the problem is speculation.”