Mark Stücklin
Barcelona’s mayor has suggested banning non-EU foreigners from buying second homes in the city. It makes for striking headlines, but the data suggests the target group is tiny and irrelevant to the housing crisis.
Barcelona mayor Jaume Collboni recently gave an interview to the local press in which he proposed a dramatic restriction on property purchases by foreigners. Responding to concerns about housing affordability, he declared: “I would ban them,” referring to the idea that foreigners from outside the EU should not be allowed to buy homes in the Catalan capital.
Collboni framed the issue as a problem of speculative international wealth crowding out local residents. According to the mayor, the buyers in question are “super-rich” individuals who buy homes around the world and “also want to have a little flat in Barcelona when they come on holiday.”
He suggested their purchases are hollowing out neighbourhoods. In some areas of the city, such as the Eixample, he said there are buildings with “semi-empty staircases where there are flats in which nobody lives for most of the year.”
The mayor also warned investors (especially foreigners) buying homes to rent out that “those who buy to speculate and rent out property, in Barcelona the sweet deal is over.”
Collboni acknowledged that banning certain groups of foreign buyers would face constitutional difficulties, but nevertheless insisted that stronger action was needed. While the Spanish government is reportedly considering higher taxes on non-resident buyers, the mayor suggested he would go further.
The numbers behind the rhetoric
The problem with Collboni’s argument is that the numbers simply do not support it.
According to the latest figures from the Spanish notaries for the full year 2025, Barcelona recorded 17,133 home sales. Of these, 32% were bought by foreigners – around 5,483 transactions.
However, only a fraction of those purchases involved non-resident buyers. Non-residents accounted for about 15% of foreign purchases, which means roughly 822 transactions in total.
The subset that Collboni wants to ban – non-resident buyers from outside the EU – is smaller still. Based on the available data they cannot have accounted for more than about 660 purchases in the whole year, and the real figure is probably closer to 280.
In other words, the group the mayor is blaming for hollowing out Barcelona neighbourhoods likely represents around 2% of the city’s housing market, possibly even less.
Eliminating that demand entirely would have no meaningful impact on prices, supply, or affordability.
Political theatre in the housing debate
So why target such a tiny group?
The answer is familiar in Spanish housing politics. Foreign buyers who do not live in the city and do not vote make a convenient scapegoat. Blaming them for the housing crisis is politically easy, even when the evidence suggests they play no significant role in driving the market.
Barcelona’s housing shortage has far deeper structural causes – limited new supply, planning constraints, rising demand, and regulatory policies that discourage investment and development.
Banning a few hundred foreign buyers a year would not change any of that. What it does do is create a simple narrative: the housing crisis is someone else’s fault.
