the radical plan that Barcelona is considering for foreigners

New year, old worries. In one of his first polls 2025, the CIS has confirmed (to no one’s surprise) that one of the issues that most worries Spaniards at this start of the year, if not the most, is housing. Their prices and accessibility keep more people awake at night than the progress of the economy or the political debate. With that backdrop, in Barcelona, ​​one of the cities in the country where the more they are getting more expensive rentals, have decided to make a move to protect their market from speculation.

and has an idea: prohibiting foreigners from purchasing homes in Barcelona if it is not to reside in them.

What has happened? That Barcelona City Council has placed duties on itself in terms of housing. Its Commission on Ecology, Urban Planning, Mobility and Housing has approved an ERC proposal that raises explore the legal form to prohibit the purchase of homes by investment funds and foreign people who are not going to reside in them. The measure has moved forward with the support of the Republicans, PSC and Barcelona en Comú and the rejection of PP, Vox and Junts.

Click on the image to go to the tweet.

What exactly have they approved? The proposal of ERC advocated that the City Council, together with the rest of the administrations with powers in the matter, “promote the necessary legislative tools to prohibit the purchase of housing by all investment funds and non-resident persons (natural or legal) in the country, if it is not for one’s own residential use or that of a direct family member”.

The Newspaper clarify that the PSC proposed a compromise to the ERC proposal (accepted by this group) so that, instead of requiring the Consistory to “promote legislative measures”, it would first commit to studying them. In any case, the commission closed with a clear message from the municipal body: it is open to prohibiting the purchase of homes by foreign companies and people who are not going to reside in them.

Objective: not to be Monopoly. Republican councilor Eva Baró insisted on the importance of the measure to prevent Barcelona from “being sold in pieces as if it were the board of a Monopoly game.” “The original sin is mainly one: having understood housing as a market good, at the service of capital, instead of understanding housing as a human right, a necessity, that the public powers had to protect,” claimed.

But… Doesn’t the Government want to do that? If anything has become clear at the start of 2025, it is that housing has become a priority issue on the political agenda. In less than a month they have presented their recipe book to facilitate access to both the PP like the Government, which recently announced a plan 12 measuresamong them one that consists of limiting through taxes the purchase of homes by foreigners from outside the EU who do not reside in Spain. As? With a tax burden of up to 100% of the value of the property.

ERC advocate for going further in Barcelona. Its proposal is not limited only to buyers from outside the EU, it also wants to extend to EU foreigners. “It is not worth stopping halfway. This initiative would not only affect non-resident non-EU citizens like the one announced by Sánchez, but also investment funds and ultimately everyone, including community members, who do not buy a home to live in” , Baró emphasizes.

Looking beyond Spain. Republican Left argues that, if it ends up coming to fruition, his proposal for Barcelona would not be so strange. Not at least if you put it in the European context. The training assures that in Amsterdam or Utrecht, both in the Netherlands, measures have been applied “that go along those lines to limit speculation” in the market.

And at least in the specific case of Utrecht the idea seems to have had effects, according to the broken down data by Baró: “78% of the homes sold in the last two years were acquired by residents, while investors only managed to acquire 11% of the homes.” In other countries On the old continent, restrictions also apply to the sale of homes to foreigners.

It matters how… and when. The agreement of the Housing Commission of Barcelona City Council is important for its content, but also for its context. And this one is not marked only by CIS data or the package of measures announced last week by Pedro Sánchez.

A few days ago it was revealed that the “Golden visa” they have broken records in Catalonia, with the granting of 314 of these visas, especially to Chinese, Iranian, American and British investors, according to the data shelled by The Vanguard. 98% of these permits (308) correspond to Barcelona.

What do the “Golden visa” show us? This enormous flow of “Golden visa” is no coincidence. In April the Government will end these residence visasa figure approved in the time of Mariano Rajoy and which is designed for non-EU residents who want to invest in financial assets in Spain or acquire a property for which they allocate at least 500,000 euros. According to the BBC, between 2013 and 2023, more than 5,000 of these golden visas, especially to Chinese (2,712) and Russian (1,159) investors.

Images | Enes (Unsplash)

In Xataka | After leaving Catalonia due to the rent cap, the investment funds have a new objective: Valencia