POTENTIALLY millions of Spaniards will take to the streets this weekend to protest against ‘the housing racket’.
Demonstrations are scheduled for Malaga, Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, Mallorca, Ibiza, Tenerife and a host of other major cities across the country on April 5.
Many Spaniards, particularly young people, say they are fed-up of being increasingly priced out of city centres due to rising rents and surging buying costs.
The brunt of the crisis has been blamed on the rise of tourist apartments, which have surged by tens of thousands over the past few years.
The most affected areas are naturally tourist hotspots like Madrid, Sevilla, Malaga, Tenerife, Mallorca, Ibiza, Valencia, Cadiz and elsewhere.
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In many cities, business owners and landlords are turning their properties into short-term holiday lets due to the much higher returns.
But this is stripping supply for local families desperate for long-term accommodation, while those looking to buy are seeing prices reach astronomical heights.
The anger reached new heights in Barcelona last year when locals were filmed spraying tourists with water pistols and telling them to go home.
Many have argued that the tourists are not to blame, when many of the property owners creating tourist flats are in fact Spanish.
But local governments have been forced to act in the face of mammoth protests.
Barcelona announced last year that it will ban ALL of its tourist apartments by 2028. The measure includes retroactively removing licences from all existing holiday flats.
Malaga also recently announced that it will introduce a ‘global moratorium’ on tourist flats, although more details have yet to be revealed.
