The accounts don’t work out. New homes are created in Spain much faster from which houses are built, which threatens to aggravate the deficit residential and the housing crisis that the country is dragging. The problem is also that a good part of that demand is focused in points like Madrid, where promoters warn that the gap is getting bigger. The question is, where to build? How to get out of this vicious circle in areas like Madrid, where 98% of developable land is it already built? And above all, how to do it without endless procedures?
There are those who believe that the solution is to look up.
Literally.
The example of the Basque Country. Like many other regions in Spain, Euskadi wants to improve the residential offer in its cities. And like many other regions it faces the dilemma of where the hell to build. In October the Basque Executive presented your solution to that dilemma: building new apartments on existing buildings. To be more precise, his idea is to create 2,000 accommodations in 65 already built properties, blocks with flat roofs to which two set back floors can be added. “without major problems”.
Housing yes, but not just any. The Basque initiative has (yes) some important nuances. The idea is not to simply build housing. The 65 buildings that the Executive has in its sights They are publicpart of its rental property park, and the objective is to create “dotational accommodation”.
That is, the Basque program has a clear social focus and seeks to increase the housing stock available to vulnerable groups. If Euskadi manages to carry out the initiative, this provision will triple in the region, which right now adds up to 937 accommodations in use and 253 still under construction.
Are they just projects? No. Last week the Ministry of Housing and Urban Agenda made it clear who does not want the plans to build in height to remain just that: simple plans on paper. The Executive already has “six preliminary lifting projects” with which it hopes to win 189 residential apartments, the first of the 2,000 that it hopes to build. If its schedule is met, this year the necessary studies will be processed so that the works begin around 2028 and are completed between 2029 and 2030. “We are not dealing with theoretical exercises, but rather viable and quantifiable proposals,” underlines counselor Denis Itxaso.
Going down to detail. The 189 homes They will sit on blocks that are already part of the public park and are spread across five locations.
In Miribilla (Bilbao) work will be done on two buildings from 2008 to gain 28 apartments, in Leioa 34 new homes will be enabled on a property from 2019 and in Vitoria-Gasteiz work will be done on two developments to gain 82 new apartments. The regional government’s list is completed by Mutriku and Arrasate (Gipuzkoa). Each one will incorporate around twenty extra accommodations in height.
Architecture (and more). To move forward with the initiative, not only has political will been needed. Euskadi has relied on two key legs. The first is the system industrialized constructionbased on prefabricated modules that, as recognized in October the Government, allow “reducing deadlines and costs”. The second is a regulatory change that allows cities to ‘gain height’.
Specifically, the counseling remembers the Law 3/2015 of Housing that allows town councils to give the green light to public accommodation “on the edges of residential plots” if certain requirements are met, such as public ownership and social use. Also the Law 6/2025 of Urgent Measures in Urban Planning.
“These residential units, being considered residential equipment, do not increase urban buildability and, therefore, can be undertaken without the need to modify the general planning,” claims the Housing Minister, who has announced that the new sections built on top of buildings will be intended mainly for young tenants.
Does it only happen in the Basque Country? No. Expanding the height of buildings to gain housing is not an idea exclusive to Euskadi. In Spain it has been proposed (with greater or lesser fortune) in other parts, such as Barcelona, where permits have already been granted to increase the buildability of residential blocks.
In 2017 The Country informed that in three years the Catalan City Council had given the green light to build up to 120 homes in “remontas” of around thirty buildings. Another city that has worked along the same lines It’s Palma.
Injecting housing. Other interesting case It is the one from Valencia. A year ago the PSOE proposed in the City Council’s Urban Planning Commission to retouch the PGOU so that the buildings could gain height and reinforce the local residential offer. The idea did not achieve the necessary support, but it still yielded interesting ideas.
According to its authors, if just one extra floor were added to the city’s buildings, more than 86,600 homes. If historic and protected properties are discarded, the figure drops slightly, but it would still exceed 72,200 apartments.
One word: “Optoppen”. Nor is Spain the only one that looks to the sky looking for space with which to reinforce the residential offer, especially in places where developable land is beginning to become a scarce commodity.
In Holland an ABN AMOR study assures that the construction of apartments on rooftops will make it possible to gain 100,000 homes facing 2030, which does not mean that the formula is still being used in a discreet way.
To be more precise is talked about optoppenwhich consists of expanding buildings vertically prioritizing sustainable materials. Among other advantages, it allows you to gain housing in already urbanized space without demolitions or major works.
Are they all advantages? No. Building vertically implies having more population concentrated in the same space. And that entails certain problems, as Madrid is seeing, which has found that the “urban intensification” who proposes his Municipal Strategic Plan to increase the supply of housing has aroused the suspicion of residents of areas such as Tetuán, San Blas or Usera.
Basically the residents warn that this greater “density” can overload already very saturated areas and worsen the deficit of services. “Densifying the densest district of Madrid and with serious lack of equipment and public space is, simply, overcrowding the neighborhood even more,” they conclude.
Images | Valeriia Ruban (Unsplash) and Basque Government
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