Spain's Housing Crisis Sparks Mass Protests Over 'Vulture Funds'

Hundreds of tents now occupy Madrid's Puerta del Sol, their canvas a visible indictment of Spain's housing crisis. Among them is Pierina Nicuray, a 21-year-old university graduate who has spent a week camped in the square's center, convinced she knows exactly who to blame. "It's the same problem as always," she says. "A lack of homes." Beside her, Jorge Moreno, a 19-year-old film student, points to a different culprit: investment firms and what protesters call vulture funds—companies that buy properties, push out existing tenants through rent hikes, and leave homes empty while waiting for prices to climb. "They've been making a business of housing for a long time," Jorge says. "But it's an abusive business which stops Spaniards from being able to live in a decent home."

The movement crystallized around a single, tragic case. Maricarmen Abascal, 87 years old, was evicted from her home after an investment firm purchased the building and began systematically raising her rent beyond what she could pay. The company eventually invited her back, but she never returned to the apartment. She died in a hospital on Wednesday. Her story became the spark that transformed private suffering into public rage, and now the tents in Puerta del Sol stand as a monument to her and thousands like her.

The numbers backing the protesters' anger are stark. Rental costs across Spain have climbed 84 percent over the past decade, according to property data firm Idealista. In the southern city of Málaga, the increase reached 113 percent. In Marbella, it approached 150 percent. These are not abstract figures—they represent the difference between staying housed and joining the tent cities. Carmen Pérez, a retired widow originally from Ecuador who has lived in Spain for 17 years, watched housing shift from affordable to impossible. She now lives with her daughter and son-in-law, searching for a rental she can manage. "When a property is listed to rent, there's always a long waiting list," she says. "And the rent is always too high for me. All of this has affected my health—I've got depression, I don't have any stability or security."

Public opinion has aligned with the protesters. A recent study by Spain's Centre for Sociological Research found that 72 percent of Spaniards support higher taxes on those owning 10 or more properties. Seventy-six percent want limits on short-term tourist rentals like Airbnb. Forty percent back the expropriation of empty homes. Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, presenting emergency housing measures to Congress, framed the crisis as a battle "against those who consider housing just another object on the market with which to speculate." When Congress rejected those reforms, Sánchez called a snap election for next month.

Yet the diagnosis offered by protesters and politicians may not fully match the disease. Jorge Galindo, director of economic policy at the Esade centre, cautions that the data on vulture funds remains murky. Bank of Spain figures from 2024 show that only 8 percent of rental properties are owned by companies at all. Galindo argues the real culprit is not speculation but scarcity: Spain has a housing shortfall of approximately 750,000 homes, a figure the Bank of Spain estimates could climb to one million by 2028. Between 2021 and 2025, Spain added roughly 1.2 million new households—driven largely by migration that has fueled economic growth—but constructed fewer than half a million new homes. The construction industry had contracted after the Eurozone crisis, material costs spiked following the pandemic, and political gridlock created legal barriers to building.

Spain does have 3.8 million empty properties, but most sit in depopulated rural areas with little bearing on the urban crisis. Others await renovation or remain tangled in family inheritance disputes. Short-term tourist rentals like Airbnb have likely pushed prices upward in specific neighborhoods rather than nationwide. The deeper problem is demographic: demand has outpaced supply by more than two to one, and wages have not kept pace with either. A study by El País found that the average Spaniard has 5 percent less spending power than a decade ago when adjusted for taxes, inflation, and social security contributions. The average monthly salary in Madrid is €1,550. An 81-year-old retired taxi driver visiting the tent city, Francisco Pardo, voiced what many workers face: "No worker should have to spend 75 or 80 percent of their salary on rent, because what are they supposed to eat?"

The death of Maricarmen Abascal has transformed the housing crisis from a persistent background anxiety into an urgent national question. Protesters and policymakers now occupy the same moral space, even if they disagree on causes. The tents in Puerta del Sol will not disappear until Spain builds its way out of shortage, restrains speculation, or both—and so far, no consensus exists on how to do either.