Leaving home at five in the morning to travel 200 kilometers before arriving at work and repeating the same route back is, in fact, the daily routine of thousands of Spaniards who live and work not already in different citiesbut in different autonomous communities.
The housing market has turned cities like Madrid or Barcelona into places where living is economically unviable for many working families. This phenomenon already has a name: pendulum travelers. And their number does not stop growing.
Housing as a driving force of the exodus. According to data From the Tax Agency’s Labor Market Mobility survey, in 2019, 166,000 workers changed autonomous communities or provinces. In 2024, there were 236,848, which represents an increase of 30%. The reason why so many people choose to move between communities every day fits into one fact. In 2024 alone, 54,500 employees left the province of Madrid and 30,475 did the same from Barcelona.
The sociologist Sara Porras, doctor in Applied Sociology at the Complutense University, confirmed in statements to The Newspaper What was the reason for that migration? outside the big cities. These are “expulsion processes caused by the overheating of housing prices, which have made rents unpayable,” said the sociologist.
A life of early mornings and packed trains. As and how I collected The Spanish NewspaperMiguel Ángel García has spent years with one foot in Valladolid and another in Madrid, where he works in the financial sector. Miguel Ángel leaves the Campo Grande station at 6:45 and returns at 3:40 p.m. “Distance is not measured in kilometers, but in time: it is 170 kilometers, but it took an hour“, just as if I lived in Leganés,” he says. In his company there are 55 people who travel daily from Valladolid or Segovia, and they attribute their situation to the flexibility it has provided. the arrival of teleworking and hybrid days, which have reduced the days of mandatory presence in the office.
The economic key is given by Elena Parreño, a journalist who moved from Barcelona to a town ten minutes from Gerona, that declared to The Newspaperthat “before, a round-trip ticket Gerona-Barcelona cost 27 euros; now, with the discounted passes, it is just over eight.” Begoña, a 40-year-old civil servant, made the same calculation on the other side of the map, and bought a house in Valladolid (something she describes as “impossible in Madrid”) and makes the daily journey to the capital in just over an hour on Avant trains.
How much does it cost to leave and how much does it cost to stay?. The numbers explain a good part of the exodus that Madrid or Barcelona suffer towards other provinces with more affordable housing prices. The gap between housing prices in large urban centers and nearby provinces largely explains this exodus. Madrid closed 2025 with an average purchase price of 5,914 euros/m2while in Valladolid the average was around at 2,006 euros/m2.
The contrast of the example in Catalonia is just as striking. Barcelona reached prices of 5,144 euros/m2in front of 2,667 euros/m2 which the province of Gerona recorded on average.
The AVE factor. Another decisive factor in this migratory movement towards territories with a more affordable housing price is railway vertebrationwhich makes it possible to connect cities far enough away to reduce real estate tension, but not so far away that covering that distance requires investing a good part of the day. At that point, the train has become the only possible alternative.
He Renfe Single Passvalid since January 2025, allows unlimited use of Cercanías and medium-distance trains throughout Spain for 60 euros per month (30 for those under 26 years of age). This savings has caused an increase in the use of the train to reach the big cities that, according to data From the last Railway Observatory in Spain in 2023, the Gerona-Barcelona line will register a total of 2,436,098 passengers, 44.7% more than the previous year, while the Madrid-Valladolid line reached 2,264,882, an increase of 64% compared to 2022. In 2024, the trend continued to rise, and only on the line Madrid-Segovia-Valladolid exceeded 2.7 million annual travelers.
In Xataka | A silent phenomenon is brewing in Madrid: people who go to live in Valladolid and return to work by train
Image | Unsplash (Yunming Wang)
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