In Spain, two cities face the same crisis, but are responding in fundamentally different ways. Over the past decade, the cost of housing in Madrid and Barcelona has soared – with rents rising by about 60% and sale prices by 90% – leaving young people, working families and retired people struggling to stay in their homes or even find one.

Yet, while one city is betting everything on construction and giving free rein to big investors, the other is cautiously trying to steer the housing market towards the public good, despite political and institutional constraints.

This is more than a national contrast. It’s a story of two cities and two competing visions now taking root across Europe.

While Spain’s economy continues to grow on paper, the reality on the ground tells a different story – one of worsening inequality and housing exclusion. In the past decade, more than half of all homes have been bought without a mortgage, a sign that many are being acquired not by those in need of housing but by those who already own property. The number of people who own at least 10 homes has jumped by 20%.

This is what I call the great housing grab. Since the mortgage crisis of 2008, more than 1.3m units have entered Spain’s rental market. They weren’t newly built, but homes lost by working-class families and scooped up by investors, including large private equity firms. The conservative government in power between 2011 and 2018 not only handed out tax breaks and public money through a massive bailout of the banks, but also rewrote tenancy laws to turn tenants themselves into profitable assets for those institutions.

The ideal of a middle-class society of homeowners is collapsing. Those already asset rich are buying up more homes and outcompeting working families. And those families, if lucky, now rent those same homes back at inflated prices, enriching the wealthy.........

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