Blanca Castro put on the builder’s helmet and opened the kitchen door. In it, there is a large hole in the ceiling that is dripping water and it looks like it can collapse at any time.

Since the kitchen is not available, Blanca has to wash dishes in the bathtub and she has a gas camping stove for the cooking area in the corner of the living room.

Many of her fellow citizens had similar problems in the apartment block near Atato Railway Station in Madrid. They said the company that owns the building has stopped responding to requests for basic maintenance in recent months because it is notified that they will not renew their rental contracts.

“The current rental bubble encourages many big owners to do what they are doing here,” Blanca said. “It’s about getting rid of tenants who have been here for a long time in order to have short-term tourist apartments, or just for hiking.”

Blanca and her tenants vowed to stay in the building, and despite their belief that they were working hard to push it out, they were unable to comment on this article.

The lease contract lasted for five years, during which rents were fixed, but housing costs in central Madrid have soared in recent years.

“For another house like this (in this field), I have to pay twice or more now,” Blanca said. “It’s not feasible.”

She and her neighbors are millions of Spaniards who suffer from the consequences of a housing crisis due to rental costs.

Although wages have increased by about 20% over the past decade, average rents in Spain have doubled during the same period. Housing has become the Spanish’s biggest concern, according to data provided by real estate portal Mexolectista.

This also caused anger, with the Spaniards taking to the streets to ask authorities to take action to make housing more affordable. On Saturday, thousands of people are expected to protest in Madrid and dozens of other cities on April 5.

A report from the Spanish Central Bank found that nearly 40% of households now spend more than 40% of their income on accommodation.

“The problem at the moment is a huge imbalance between supply and demand,” said Juan Villén of Mexufareista. “Demand is very good, the economy is growing a lot, but the supply is very fast.”

Mr. Wien gave an example of Barcelona, ​​where rent increases became notorious. He added that nine families were competing to rent every property in the city five years ago, but that number has risen to 54. He added that rental costs increased by 60% during this period.

“We need to build more property,” Mr. Vere said. “When it comes to leasing, we need more people who are willing to rent their own properties, are willing to buy properties, renovate and put them in the rental market.”

The central government described the situation as a “social emergency” and agreed that a lack of supply is driving the crisis. Last year, the Ministry of Housing estimated that the country would need between 600,000 and 1 million new homes to meet demand over the next four years.

This demand for more housing is partly due to the arrival of immigration that joins the labour force and helps drive Spanish economic growth. The ministry also pointed out that the lack of social housing, accounting for 3.4% of the total supply, is the lowest housing in Europe.

In 2007, at the height of the real estate bubble, more than 600,000 homes were built in Spain. However, high construction costs, lack of available land and labor shortages are all factors that restrict construction in recent years, with less than 100,000 homes completed in 2024 by 2024.

The government has taken steps to incentivize construction, allocating land to build affordable housing while trying to ensure public housing does not end up in the private market, which has been a problem in the past.

But Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez also expressed his willingness to intervene in the market to control rental prices.

In a recent event, he announced that 218 low-rent apartments in the southern city of Seville, he announced that the Spaniards “want us to act, they want the housing market to be under the law of rationality, social justice, and not the law of the jungle; they want to ensure that vulture funds and speculators don’t do anything they like”.

The central government and many local governments have identified short-term tourist accommodation as part of the problem. Last year, the Canary Islands, the Balearic Islands and several cities on the mainland saw local protests in case of soaring tourist numbers and major complaints affecting rental costs.

Several town halls responded by announcing plans to limit the grant of tourist space permits, while Barcelona will further revoke their permits to all 10,000 registered short-term apartments in the city by 2028.

The Sanchez administration has also pushed for a Parliament housing law that includes rent caps in so-called “high tension” areas where prices are out of control. Political resistance means that so far the legislation has been implemented only in the northern regions of the Basque country, Navarra and Catalonia, and its success is open.

Since the cap introduction a year ago, regional and central governments led by socialists have pointed out that rent costs in Catalonia’s “high tension” areas have fallen by 3.7% and rents in Barcelona have fallen by 6.4%.

But critics warned that the rental cap shocked owners and caused thousands of properties to be evacuated from the market.

“The problem with supply is that all the measures taken by local or national governments are against landlords,” Mr Wien said. “Even people who are engaged in building new properties have been selling their properties because they don’t want to enter the rental market.”

Another initiative proposed by the central government is the exciting debate that property purchased from non-residents outside the EU is subject to taxes of up to 100%, citing that these homes are often barely inhabited. This is a measure that, if launched, will have a significant impact on UK buyers.

The conservative opposition accused the government of being too mean to take its approach. But as public anger arose on the issue, there are many others who want the country’s leaders to act more intensely.

Gonzaloálvarez of Sindicato de Inkilinas E Inquilinos, a campaign for tenant rights organization, agrees that the lack of available homes is a problem, but insists that building more homes is not the answer.

“Because the houses were hijacked – on the one hand, the tourist apartments, and on the other hand, all the vacant land belonging to the Condor Fund and the bank,” he said. “So, there is no need to build more, which is not necessary. But the houses we have been hijacked.”

His organization hopes that the government imposes substantial rents on owners and threatens to plan a nationwide strike for tenants, which will cause participants to refuse to pay rent.

“There is no restrictions set by the (central and local) government,” said Mr Álvarez. “So who will come? We have to do that.”