The Spanish Government is negotiating a housing decree to be approved by the Council of Ministers following protests over recent evictions. Sergio Nasarre explains the legal grounds for evictions and the effects of housing policy in recent years

Since the Great Recession hit the global economy in 2007, evictions have been one of Spanish society’s main concerns. The bursting of Spain’s property bubble, combined with rising interest rates and the surge in unemployment caused by the global crisis, left many families unable to pay either their mortgages or their rent, and they lost their homes.

Almost 20 years later, the concern remains. Since mid-2024, mortgage foreclosures have risen again in some autonomous communities, particularly Andalusia and Catalonia, unlike evictions of tenants, according to data from Spain’s National Statistics Institute (INE).

Homeowners, tenants and squatters

There are three types of eviction: of homeowners, following mortgage foreclosure for non-payment; of tenants, if they stop paying the rent, damage the property, engage in antisocial behaviour or fail to leave voluntarily when the contractual or statutory term ends; and of squatters.

The legal basis for each type of eviction is different, even though the outcome is the same (the occupants are forced to leave the property):

• In the first case, the borrower has failed to make the agreed repayments on a loan (usually hundreds of thousands of euros repayable over several decades) without which the home could not have been bought, and for which the home itself was put up as security.
• In the second case, the tenant lives in a property that belongs to someone else and must compensate the owner by paying rent. Tenants are therefore obliged to keep up with their payments and to respect the term of their right to occupy the property.
• In the third case, the squatter enters and remains in someone else’s property without any legal title.

These rules are based on principles of civil law that have been with us for thousands of years, and they rest on the obligation to honour something that has been agreed (pacta sunt servanda).

Evictions are not unique to Spain, however. As we explain in our study Homeless prevention in the context of evictions (2016), they occur in every European country, and in many cases more often than in Spain.

Spiralling debt across Europe

A good indicator of the risk of eviction is the housing cost overburden rate in cities, that is, the proportion of households spending more than 40% of their income on housing, since this increases the risk of defaulting on mortgage or rent payments.

According to Eurostat, in 2025 both the European average housing cost overburden rate in cities (9.6% of households) and the rates in northern European countries (such as Denmark, Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands and Germany) were higher than in Spain (8.2%). In Denmark, for example, the rate is three times as high, and in Norway twice as high.

Similarly, OECD data from 2024 show high eviction rates in Denmark, Finland, the United Kingdom and Belgium compared with Spain.

For decades, these countries’ policies have favoured renting over home ownership. This has ultimately concentrated housing in fewer and fewer hands (investment funds, foreign owners, second and additional homes), leaving people on lower incomes dependent on them, in many cases permanently given current prices. The result has been societies of wealthy landlords and poor tenants, something Mediterranean countries like ours had been spared thanks to widespread private home ownership. This has been changing as the European Union has made it increasingly difficult for families to obtain mortgage finance, a trend clearly visible in Spain since Law 5/2019 was introduced.

Subsidised housing

Meanwhile, in autonomous communities such as Catalonia, more than 105,000 people are on the waiting list for social housing. At the same time, the housing stock currently managed by the Housing Agency of Catalonia had accumulated debts of €39 million in 2025, according to the agency’s own figures.

In principle, it is up to the public authorities to create the conditions that allow families to secure housing by their own means. When evictions occur, however, public administrations must ensure that the people affected are not left unprotected, by offering them alternative accommodation. Only then is Article 47 of the Spanish Constitution fully upheld.

If the eviction measures in the draft housing decree-law that lapsed in July 2026 were eventually approved, autonomous communities would have to offer alternative housing to the families affected. If they failed to do so, the eviction would be deemed invalid, and the autonomous community would have to cover the tenant’s unpaid rent and pay it to the landlord, provided the landlord is not a large-scale property owner. This would have a direct impact on the community’s own finances, as the experience in Poland shows.

This article was originally published in The Conversation. Click here to read the original.