For decades, the major obstacles to housing construction in Spain have almost always been the same: land, permits, financing or administrative deadlines. Today, a new limit has been added to that list, less visible and much more difficult to overcome.
In many parts of the country, promotions with approved planning and projects ready to start are stopped before moving a single machine. Not because of a lack of buyers or because of urban problems, but because they cannot connect to the electrical grid. Without this permit, there is no development or work possible. What seemed like a technical procedure has become an unexpected wall. And it happens more and more frequently.
The grid says “no”: the collapse of electrical capacity. The data confirms that this is not a one-time problem. Spain is going through structural saturation of its electrical distribution network, which is blocking new residential developments in much of the territory. According to the electrical employers’ association Aelecin 2024 the urban sector requested around 6.7 gigawatts (GW) of access and connection to the electrical grid for new housing developments. At the end of the year, only a very small part of those applications were approved. Around 40% were directly rejected due to lack of capacity, and another significant percentage was still in process.
The traffic jam was not corrected in 2025. On the contrary, according to the employeronly 12% of requests for access and connection to the electrical grid have been granted. In total, around 40 gigawatts have been requested, of which 66% could not be met due to lack of capacity, a fact that reinforces the idea that the problem is no longer temporary, but structural.
The diagnosis is clear for the promoter sector. The Association of Real Estate Developers of Madrid, ASPRIMA, estimates that the capacity corresponding to the applications denied in 2024 is equivalent to approximately 350,000 homes throughout Spain that are at risk of not being able to be urbanized, at least within the planned deadlines.
The situation did not improve the following year. Although the data disaggregated by sector is not yet known, as El Mundo has detailedthe rejection rate for all applications for network access – including industry, urban planning, data centers or electric mobility – has increased to 66%, compared to 49% the previous year.
A problem that spreads throughout the territory. The electricity blockade especially affects large cities, where the demand for housing is higher and residential developments are concentrated. Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia and Seville are among the areas with the highest volume of rejected urban planning applications, as El Mundo has had access.
But the problem is not limited to large urban centers. Entire provinces have critical levels of saturation. The capacity maps of the distribution network confirm this x-ray. The latest update shows that more than 88% of electrical nodes medium and low voltage networks are already saturated, which prevents the connection of new residential consumers.
Why has it reached this point? The causes of the collapse are multiple and have accumulated over time. One of the main ones is the mismatch between urban planning and electrical planning. As ASPRIMA explainedresidential developments advance on paper without the network being prepared to absorb the new demand, forcing developers to assume unforeseen reinforcements or wait for network expansions that can take years.
Added to this imbalance is a simultaneous increase in electricity demand coming from several fronts: industrial electrification, data centerselectric mobility, self-consumption and energy rehabilitation of the housing stock. According to Endesa datamore than 50% of connection requests are being rejected due to insufficient capacity.
Regulation is another link in the traffic jam. The current system prioritizes the order of arrival (“first come, first served”), regardless of the degree of maturity of the projects. There are also long and rigid power reserves, as well as points with physically available capacity that are not used due to regulatory barriers, what is known as “idle capacity”.
All of this is based on an infrastructure designed for an energy system very different from the current one. As We have pointed out in several analyzes in Xatakafor every euro invested in electricity generation, barely 40 cents are allocated to networks, when the energy transition requires just the opposite: strengthening transportation and distribution.
A lot of land, little capacity to connect it. The contrast between potential and reality is striking. Spain has classified residential land with theoretical capacity for up to seven million homes, but only a minimal fraction is in a position to be developed in the short term.
According to the Atlas Reanalytics report87% of potential homes lack immediate access to the electrical grid, which limits their viability even in advanced phases of urban management. The average time to transform land into housing exceeds twenty years in most provinces. In other words, the problem is not just how much land is available, but what infrastructure goes along with it.
Unlocking the bottleneck. Given this scenario, ASPRIMA has prepared a report with 16 measures to unlock thousands of homes through regulatory and operational changes in the electrical infrastructure. The proposals are grouped into five large areas: network planning, optimization of existing capacity, administrative streamlining, certainty in the execution of infrastructure and review of cost distribution.
From the electricity sector they agree that the problem requires an urgent response. Aelec, together with Deloitte, calls for more investment in networksmore advance and flexible planning and a stable regulatory framework that facilitates the financing of new infrastructures. It also proposes taking advantage of underused capacity in the transportation network and accelerating permits and reinforcements.
An impact that goes beyond construction. The saturation of the electrical network not only affects the promotion of new housing. It also threatens electrification and improving the efficiency of the existing residential stock. Today, the residential sector concentrates the 18% of final energy consumption and continues to rely heavily on fossil fuels for air conditioning.
Without a network capable of absorbing new demand, it will be difficult to deploy technologies such as the heat pump either meet the objectives of emissions reductions marked in the National Integrated Energy and Climate Plan.
At the same time, the shortage of supply contributes to maintaining pressure on prices. At the end of 2025, almost 40% of citizens indicated housing as the country’s main problem, according to the CISwhile rents face historical increases in many communities.
A physical limit at the center of the debate. The housing crisis in Spain is no longer explained solely by the lack of land, financing or administrative deadlines. The electrical grid has become critical infrastructure for residential development.
The debate coincides with the review of the regulatory and remuneration framework of electricity networks by the CNMC and with the Government’s plans to increase investment in electricity distribution in the coming years. Without reinforcements, without advance planning and without regulatory changes that allow better use of existing capacity, many projects will continue to be stopped before starting.
The warning is shared by developers, electricity companies and analysts: the housing deficit will not be corrected only with plans and classified land if the infrastructure that makes it possible does not support it. Because today, in many places in Spain, the problem is not whether it can be built, but whether there is electricity to do it.
GIPHY App Key not set. Please check settings