Mark Stücklin
Catalonia’s politicians are at it again—cooking up another intervention in the housing market that will make things worse for everyone, except perhaps for those who thrive on crisis.
The Generalitat has announced it will study whether to ban property purchases that are not for a buyer’s main residence, following a report from the Barcelona Metropolitan Strategic Plan (PEMB) suggesting such restrictions might be legally viable if applied in limited areas and timeframes. President Salvador Illa says he’s open to the idea “as long as it’s legal, realistic and effective.”
A familiar story: more controls, less housing
Catalonia already leads Spain in housing-market intervention. Rent caps, a new registry of large landlords (with fines for non-compliance), higher property transfer tax for institutional owners, and Barcelona’s now-infamous 30% affordable-housing rule have all helped freeze development. The result? Fewer homes and higher prices—the opposite of what was promised.
Now, some local councils and left-wing parties want to go a step further and prohibit purchases by anyone who doesn’t plan to live in the property, arguing this would stop “speculative buying.” But speculation has long since left the Spanish housing market. Costs and risks are too high, returns too low, and the timeframes far too long for speculators to bother. The scapegoat exists only in the political imagination.
Politics of crisis
This obsession with “speculators” is revealing. Every time Catalan left-wing politicians—or even the socialist government in Madrid—talk about housing, that word pops up in the first breath. It’s a convenient bogeyman to distract from years of failed housing policy. In reality, the market is driven by demographics, supply constraints, and the sheer difficulty of building anything new in Spain, not by profiteers flipping flats.
The harder truth is that for the far left, a housing crisis isn’t a problem—it’s a political opportunity. The more acute the pain, the easier it is to mobilise anger, radicalise debate, and push the idea that capitalism itself is to blame. In that sense, worsening conditions serve their ideological agenda perfectly.
A legal stretch too far
Finally, there’s the small matter of legality. Property rights are a national competence, not a regional one. Catalonia almost certainly lacks the authority to vet who can buy a home and for what purpose. Any such restriction would quickly be challenged in the courts, as have so many other local experiments in intervention.
For now, this proposal remains just that—a political signal rather than a serious policy. But it confirms a familiar pattern: when faced with housing shortages, Catalonia reaches for control instead of construction. And that, unfortunately, is why the crisis will continue.
