From Renters to Protesters: How Spain’s Housing Movement Has Grown

Spain’s housing movement has evolved from neighbourhood campaigns against evictions into a nationwide tenant movement focused increasingly on rents, insecure contracts, tourist accommodation, public housing and the power of landlords. The transformation has been gradual: the mortgage crisis of the post-2008 period created one generation of housing activism, while the later rental crisis produced new tenant unions designed to organise people who could remain housed yet still face repeated rent increases, expiring contracts and displacement.

By 2024 and 2025, that organising had become capable of mobilising tens or hundreds of thousands of people in major demonstrations. In October 2024, a major housing protest took place in Madrid; in November, Barcelona saw a mass demonstration demanding lower rents. On 5 April 2025, protests took place in around 40 Spanish cities, with more than 150,000 people reported by organisers in Madrid alone. By October 2026, the movement had entered another phase after the eviction of 87-year-old María del Carmen Abascal became a catalyst for demonstrations and a large housing protest camp in Madrid’s Puerta del Sol.

From the mortgage crisis to the rental crisis

Spain’s modern housing movement has roots in the aftermath of the 2008 financial and property crisis.

During the years following the housing-market collapse, activism was strongly associated with mortgage distress and evictions. The Plataforma de Afectados por la Hipoteca, or PAH, became one of the most visible organisations in that period, campaigning around mortgage debt, foreclosures and evictions.

The social problem changed as the housing market recovered.

For many households, the central housing risk was no longer simply losing a mortgaged home. Renting itself became increasingly insecure. Rising rents, temporary contracts, landlord decisions not to renew leases and competition for limited housing created a different kind of vulnerability.

That shift helped create the tenant-union model.

The Barcelona Sindicat de Llogateres traces its origins to meetings that began in autumn 2016 among renters and housing activists. Organisations including the PAH, Observatori DESC and neighbourhood groups were involved in discussions about creating a dedicated organisation for tenants. The union was publicly launched in May 2017.

The change was significant because it altered the basic organising unit.

Instead of focusing primarily on people already facing foreclosure, tenant organisations could organise renters around the ongoing relationship between landlord and tenant.

The rise of tenant unions

The tenant-union model borrowed some of its organisational logic from trade unionism.

Tenants could become members, organise collectively and negotiate with landlords rather than approaching every housing dispute as an isolated case.

The Barcelona union’s own history describes early campaigns around rent increases, contract terminations, abusive conditions, investment funds and tourist apartments. It also developed legal support, collective negotiations and building-level organisation.

One of its most important early campaigns, Ens Quedem—roughly, “We stay”—was launched in 2018. The strategy encouraged tenants facing rent increases or displacement to organise collectively and negotiate as a group rather than dealing with landlords individually. The union describes the campaign as becoming a central part of its organising model.

This approach changed the politics of housing protest.

A tenant facing a rent increase may have little bargaining power alone. A building in which multiple tenants coordinate their response presents a different negotiating relationship.

Academic research on Spain’s tenant unions has identified this as an important development. A 2024 study argues that tenant organisations have gone beyond conventional lobbying by combining grassroots organisation with campaigns intended to influence housing legislation and challenge the treatment of housing primarily as a commodity.

Why the rental market changed the movement

The growth of tenant activism cannot be separated from changes in Spain’s rental market.

Research by the Bank of Spain has found that rental demand increased substantially in large urban areas, while supply failed to keep pace. Rental pressure has been particularly significant among younger people and foreign-born residents and in urban and tourist locations.

That creates a different constituency from the one mobilised during the mortgage crisis.

A renter may have a job and pay the rent every month while still experiencing housing insecurity. The problem may arise when a contract expires, a landlord raises the rent, an apartment is converted to another use or the tenant cannot find another affordable home.

The political consequence is important: housing activism can involve a much larger section of the working population than the narrower population facing immediate mortgage foreclosure.

The broader affordability crisis has continued to intensify this pressure, as examined in Spain’s Housing Crisis Deepens as Rents Outpace Household Budgets and Tenants Take to the Streets.

From individual disputes to collective bargaining

One of the defining features of the new housing movement is its emphasis on collective action.

Traditional housing assistance often treats the tenant as an individual seeking advice about a contract, eviction or rent increase. Tenant unions instead attempt to turn individual disputes into collective campaigns.

That can involve:

• Organising tenants within the same building
• Negotiating collectively with landlords
• Providing legal and organisational assistance
• Campaigning against evictions
• Challenging rent increases
• Mobilising neighbourhood residents
• Campaigning for changes to housing legislation
• Organising demonstrations and rent-related campaigns

The distinction matters because the balance of power in the rental market is partly determined by how easily a landlord can replace an individual tenant.

Collective organisation attempts to change that balance by making housing disputes public and by increasing the reputational, legal or political costs associated with particular actions.

Research on Barcelona’s tenant movement describes this as an evolution in housing contention, particularly in response to the growing role of corporate landlords and the financialisation of urban housing.

Barcelona became a laboratory for tenant activism

Barcelona has been particularly important in the development of Spain’s contemporary tenant movement.

The city’s combination of strong housing demand, tourism, international investment, rising rents and limited affordable housing created conditions in which housing became a major source of political mobilisation.

The movement did not emerge from nowhere. Barcelona already had a long tradition of neighbourhood organising and housing activism, including campaigns against evictions and displacement.

But the creation of a dedicated tenant union provided a new organisational structure.

The Barcelona union’s early history records campaigns against rent increases, investment funds, contract terminations and tourist apartments, alongside efforts to create networks of tenants facing similar problems.

This helped shift housing activism from a reactive model—mobilising when a particular eviction occurred—to a more permanent organisational model.

That distinction became increasingly important as the rental crisis became structural rather than episodic.

The movement spread beyond individual cities

Housing activism increasingly became a national issue rather than a problem associated only with Barcelona or Madrid.

In November 2024, thousands of people marched through Barcelona demanding lower rents and defending the right to housing. Estimates of attendance differed substantially: the Barcelona municipal police reported around 22,000 participants, while organisers claimed 170,000. The demonstration was organised by the tenants’ union with support from trade unions and neighbourhood organisations.

The scale of the disagreement over attendance is itself a reminder that protest numbers should be treated carefully. Organisers and authorities frequently produce different estimates, and there is no single figure that can be assumed automatically to be definitive.

What is less ambiguous is the geographical expansion of the issue.

On 5 April 2025, housing demonstrations were held in around 40 Spanish cities. Reuters reported that more than 150,000 people participated in Madrid according to the local tenants’ union. Protesters focused on rents, the shortage of affordable housing and the expansion of tourist accommodation.

The movement was therefore no longer simply a collection of local campaigns.

Housing had become a national political issue with a common set of grievances expressed differently from city to city.

Why tourist housing became a central target

Short-term tourist accommodation has become one of the most visible targets of housing activism.

The argument made by many tenant organisations is straightforward: homes that could serve as long-term residences can instead become tourist or temporary accommodation, reducing the supply available to permanent residents in areas where housing demand is already high.

The relationship is more complicated than a simple one-for-one substitution. Housing markets are affected by construction, household formation, investment, migration, employment, planning restrictions and many other factors.

But the growth of tourist accommodation gives activists a concrete target because it represents a visible alternative use for residential property.

During the April 2025 demonstrations, protesters across Spain explicitly linked the growth of tourist flats with rising housing costs and the displacement of residents. Reuters reported that Spain had received a record 94 million tourists in 2024, while the Bank of Spain estimated a substantial national housing deficit.

The political debate consequently became broader than rent levels.

It increasingly concerned what housing should be used for, who should control it and whether residential property should primarily serve residents or investors and visitors.

Temporary contracts added another layer of insecurity

Tenant activism has also focused on the changing structure of rental contracts.

A December 2024 report from the Barcelona Urban Research Institute, cited by RTVE, found that 90% of renters surveyed in Madrid and Barcelona had temporary, market-priced rental contracts. The study associated this pattern with greater residential insecurity.

The figure should be interpreted in the context of the study’s methodology rather than treated as a universal measurement of every rental arrangement in both cities.

Nevertheless, temporary contracts have become an important part of the housing debate because they can leave renters uncertain about where they will live after a relatively short period.

For a household, that uncertainty has economic consequences.

Moving repeatedly involves deposits, transport costs, agency fees where applicable, lost time and the risk of having to accept a more expensive home. For workers, it can also influence decisions about employment and commuting.

The housing movement has consequently expanded its focus from the headline rent to the security of tenure itself.

The protest became a national political language

By the mid-2020s, housing demonstrations had developed a common vocabulary.

Renters were demanding lower housing costs, stronger tenant protections, more public housing and action against forms of housing use that they believed reduced the supply available to residents.

At the same time, different groups within the movement did not necessarily agree on every policy.

Some campaigns prioritise rent regulation. Others emphasise public and social housing, restrictions on tourist accommodation, stronger tenant protections, action against evictions or increased construction.

That diversity matters because “the housing movement” is not a single organisation with a single programme.

It is an ecosystem of tenant unions, neighbourhood associations, anti-eviction groups, housing-rights organisations and broader social movements.

Their common ground is primarily the claim that access to housing has become sufficiently difficult to require collective political action.

The movement’s tactics have changed too

The evolution from renters’ associations to tenant unions has brought a broader repertoire of tactics.

Public demonstrations remain important, but they are only one component.

Tenant organisations have used legal challenges, collective negotiations, building-level organising, media campaigns, direct action and political lobbying. The Barcelona union’s history explicitly describes legal action, negotiations, protest and civil disobedience as elements of its organising strategy.

This represents a shift from asking governments to solve individual housing problems towards attempting to build sustained bargaining power among tenants.

Academic research describes the strategy as a form of counter-hegemonic organising: rather than merely seeking representation within existing housing policy structures, tenant unions seek to influence the rules governing housing itself.

Whether particular tactics are effective is a separate empirical question. But organisationally, the change is clear: housing activism has increasingly adopted the permanent structures associated with labour organising.

The 2025 protests showed the movement’s scale

The nationwide demonstrations of April 2025 marked an important moment in the evolution of the movement.

Protests took place across approximately 40 cities, bringing together people concerned about rents, tourism, housing shortages and affordability. Reuters reported that Madrid’s demonstration exceeded 150,000 participants according to the tenants’ union.

The significance was not simply the number of people on the streets.

Large demonstrations showed that housing could connect groups that do not normally share the same political priorities: young renters, families, long-term residents, neighbourhood organisations and people concerned about tourism-driven changes to their communities.

The movement could therefore frame housing as a broad social and economic issue rather than a problem affecting only the poorest households.

2026: From demonstrations to sustained occupation

By October 2026, the movement had entered a new and unusually visible phase.

The eviction of 87-year-old María del Carmen Abascal, after she had lived in her home for decades, became a catalyst for demonstrations in Madrid and elsewhere. AP reported that protests expanded across Spain and that demonstrators established camps in central locations while demanding government action on housing.

In Madrid, the Sindicato de Inquilinas de Madrid became closely associated with a large camp at Puerta del Sol. El País reported in October 2026 that the organisation, founded in 2017, had grown to around 3,000 members and operated through a territorial network of local groups.

The symbolism was notable.

A housing demonstration normally occupies a street for several hours. A sustained camp occupies public space until the protesters’ demands are addressed or the mobilisation changes.

That makes the protest itself part of the political message: housing insecurity is being presented not as an isolated private difficulty but as an issue requiring a continuing public response.

From evictions to rents—and from rents to housing power

The evolution of Spain’s housing movement can be understood as a sequence of expanding concerns.

The movement has therefore broadened both its constituency and its demands.

The original question—can this family keep its home?—has increasingly been joined by others: can renters remain in their neighbourhoods? Can they afford the next contract? Who gets access to housing? How much housing should be available for tourists? What role should public housing play? And who has bargaining power in the rental market?

What the movement has changed—and what remains unresolved

Spain’s housing movement has clearly changed the political visibility of housing.

Tenant organisations have helped make rent levels, temporary contracts, tourist accommodation and landlord-tenant power relationships central public issues. Their growth has also demonstrated that housing activism can move beyond individual assistance towards sustained collective organisation.

There is evidence that tenant movements have influenced housing policy debates and legislation. Academic research specifically examines how Spanish tenant organisations contributed to policy changes through organised campaigns rather than conventional lobbying alone.

But political visibility does not automatically solve a housing shortage.

Spain still faces a fundamental supply problem in high-demand areas. The Bank of Spain has identified insufficient housing supply as a major structural issue, while the European Commission has linked housing costs to labour mobility and economic opportunity. The conflict between limited supply, strong demand and competing uses of residential property remains unresolved.

That creates a difficult test for the movement.

Renters can organise around affordability and security, but sustainable improvement ultimately depends on whether Spain can increase the availability of suitable housing while determining how much protection existing tenants should receive and how housing markets should respond to investment, tourism and population growth.

The next stage of Spain’s housing movement

The most important change in Spanish housing activism may be that renters are no longer organising only when something goes wrong.

The emergence of tenant unions has created organisations capable of recruiting members, providing legal assistance, organising buildings, negotiating collectively and mobilising people onto the streets. The large demonstrations of 2024 and 2025, followed by the 2026 mobilisation around the Abascal eviction, show how individual housing disputes can become symbols for a much wider movement.

The unresolved question is whether that movement can translate mobilisation into durable improvements in housing affordability and security.

Spain’s housing debate has moved well beyond the question of whether rents are too high. It now concerns the structure of the rental market, the supply of homes, the use of residential property, the bargaining power of tenants and the role governments should play in determining who can afford to remain in the cities where they work and live. The evolution from renters seeking help to renters organising collectively has made housing one of Spain’s most persistent social movements—and its future will depend on whether protest can be matched by changes in the housing system itself.