Tomorrow Spain shuts down. Every sector, every city. The first joint general strike in 14 years, and the demand is the most basic thing in the world: people who work full time should be able to afford a roof.
Spaniards now spend half their gross salary on rent. In Barcelona it’s 76%. An 87-year-old woman named Maricarmen got evicted, sparked the biggest housing protests in a generation, and then died. The government looked at all of that and called a snap election instead of capping rents or building anything. Which is the perfect summary of every housing crisis everywhere: workers say “we can’t afford to live” and politicians say “let me check with the electorate on that.”
Spain has 2% public housing stock. The OECD average is 7%. The Bank of Spain says 700,000 homes are missing. The numbers aren’t subtle. The solution isn’t complicated. The obstacle is that solving it would cost landlords money, and landlords vote in every election too.