By Corina Pons and Jesús Aguado
MADRID (Reuters) – Sara Huertas still lives with her parents at age 30 because her supply teacher salary doesn’t pay enough for her to rent a home in Madrid with her partner.
“We looked south of Madrid, because it’s impossible in the capital, but still we got nothing,” Huertas said at a recent housing protest. “They need to do the right thing: reduce house prices and increase wages.”
Huertas is among Spaniards who feel they aren’t reaping the benefits of Europe’s fastest-growing economy. Instead she’s struggling to put a roof over her head.
Last year most European economies stagnated, but Spain’s grew by 3.2%, prompting the government to raise the 2025 growth forecast to 2.6%.
The primary factors were mass migration and tourists keeping Spain the world’s second most-visited country. The strong growth meant half a million new jobs were added to a record 21.3 million people employed in 2024, 13.5% of them migrants.
“We are optimistic for the coming years,” Israel Arroyo Martinez, Spain’s junior economy minister, told Reuters, citing other benign “tailwinds” including stable energy prices and lower interest rates supporting investment.
But as Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris discovered in November’s U.S. election, strong economic data don’t guarantee votes. Many Americans said they picked Donald Trump because they felt squeezed by the cost of living.
In Spain, anger is building over a toxic mix of housing shortages, high consumer prices and sluggish wage growth.
House prices have increased by 44% while rents have almost doubled in 10 years, according to Idealista, a property website. Meanwhile. Salaries meanwhile increased by just 19% between 2012 and 2022, according to the National Institute of Statistics.
Spain must close a deficit of 600,000 homes, the Bank of Spain says, and build 225,000 new ones each year just to keep pace with new household creation.
Such shortages risk not only driving down an already-low birth rate but also curtailing workers’ mobility and hence their career progression, a recent Caixabank Research study warned.
Migration and tourism also increase pressure on low housing stock and face risks from it.
The number of foreign visitors was a record 94 million in 2024 with more expected for 2025. Protests against short-lets which locals claim price them out of the market have generated negative headlines, though no perceptible drop in bookings yet.
Migrants meanwhile compete with locals for scarce housing.
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