Barcelona: In the streets for the expensive rents, the Catalans

Many thousands of people demonstrated today in Barcelonaresponding to the call of tenants’ associations and associations, to demand a reduction in rents but also to denounce the difficulties they face in finding accommodation in Spain’s second largest city.

The demonstrators, who were supported by parties of the Left and the unions CCOO and UGT, gathered in the late afternoon in the center of Barcelona. At the top of the march, a huge banner read the slogan ‘Decent accommodation for all’.

“Today begins a new political cycle for housing,” she told reporters Carme Arkarathosthe representative of the Catalan Tenants’ Union, who participated in the organization of the mobilization. “It is not possible for investors to come to our cities and play with the apartments as if we were Monopoly. Today, we have come to say that this is over,” she said, addressing mainly “the income earners who steal half of our salary.”

Protesters are calling for rents to be cut by 50%, tenants to be allowed to sign open-ended leases and “speculative” sales of homes to be banned. Otherwise, they threaten to go on a “rent strike”.

A similar demonstration was organized on October 13 in Madrid.

According to the online real estate portal Idealistathe rental price per square meter increased by 82% in the last decade, while the average wage only increased by 17%, according to data from the National Institute of Statistics (INE). Due to the situation, the government passed a law in early 2023 which foresees that the construction of social housing will increase and that landlords who leave their apartments empty will be fined. But this law failed to stop the rise in rents, especially in the big cities.