Mark StücklinBarcelona Mayor Jaume Collboni recently defended his housing policies in an interview with the Spanish paper El Periódico, but the reality is his efforts have delivered pitiful—if not damaging—results. These are the main points he made in defence of his housing policy, none of which stack up.
Rent controls: easy to impose, impossible to fix
Collboni presents rent regulation as a “short-term” measure to stop runaway rents, but history shows rent controls are almost impossible to unwind once the distortions set in. In Barcelona, they’ve already triggered a plunge in rental supply and contracts signed. A lucky minority may enjoy lower rents, but many more are left with nothing at all.
Affordable housing: tokenistic and irrelevant
The mayor boasts of doubling subsidised housing output from 500 to 1,000 units per year and mobilising land for 10,000 protected homes. In a city the size of Barcelona, that’s little more than symbolic. Worse, Collboni still hasn’t repealed the 30% social housing quota for new builds—a policy he supported—that has collapsed development and deepened the housing shortage.
Banning tourist flats: headline politics, no real impact
Collboni calls outlawing Barcelona’s 10,000 legal tourist rentals by 2028 a “historic and brave” move. In truth, they represent less than 1% of the city’s housing stock—nowhere near enough to shift the dial. The ban also weakens property rights, risks fuelling illegal rentals, and could deter visitors. Far better to tackle the thousands of unlicensed flats operating outside the law.
Seasonal rentals: punishing the wrong people
The push to clamp down on non-tourist seasonal lets will barely touch supply but will make life harder for students, medical visitors, and anyone needing temporary accommodation. Another case of gesture politics doing more harm than good.
Brussels grandstanding: noise, not solutions
Collboni’s lobbying in Brussels for EU funding plays well on the European stage, but the EU cannot solve Barcelona’s housing crisis. Only the city itself can—by unblocking homebuilding and investing in transport infrastructure.
Landlords and funds: blaming ghosts
Collboni insists he only targets speculative funds, not small landlords. But large investors abandoned Barcelona years ago, spooked by political hostility and poor returns. The real losers today are small landlords, who face mounting regulation, and ordinary tenants who can’t meet gold-plated application criteria in a market where evictions are nearly impossible.
The right to stay—or the right to fail?
Collboni’s slogan is the “right to stay”, but his policies are making it harder, not easier, for residents to find somewhere to live. Without a serious push to build more homes, his interventions will continue to entrench the very crisis he claims to be fighting.
Watch the interview (in Catalan)
