Very little has been built in Spain, and only the urbanizable soil and the paper needed to proceed with construction remain as insurmountable brakes. These three mantras have been all over the real estate conversation for a while now, and whether you’re on the supply or demand side, you rely on these three mantras. Are you serious? In part. More construction work has been underway for several years, although the pace of completion has been slow. There is more construction work going on than last year, but the bureaucracy has not been streamlined enough to allow work to start sooner. The various parts involved in this field share the same diagnosis. Despite the fact that the score has changed slightly, the music still sounds the same.
Statistics from the Housing Observatory and the Treasury demonstrate the speed at which construction is currently changing. Construction of 31,179 free homes began in the first quarter of 2025, the highest in this period (and any other period) in the past seven years, but only 18,642 homes were delivered, the lowest total for the first three months of the year since 2021. The behavior was the same because the housing was protected. 3,237 homes achieved official status, an increase from the beginning of 2024. However, only 2,497 people definitely received it, which is down from the previous year.
The brightness of some of these statistics pales in comparison to the 2024 record. According to the annual observatory report, the estimated value of material emissions, an indicator reflecting planned investments in construction projects, totaled 6,426.95 million euros this year, an increase of 17.8% compared to the previous calculation. Of this total amount, 4,881,570,000 yen (76%) was allocated to housing construction, including new construction and extensions. This amount is 18.3% higher than planned for 2023.
Thanks to this small mountain, the landscapes of many cities are now filled with cranes. “It’s never a bad time to be an architect,” says dean Sigfrid Elaes Official Architect of Madrid (COAM). “We have as much work now as we did before the pandemic,” he admits. In his opinion, unmoving buildable ground is still “pure speculation.” He added, “Prices are rising day by day, and there are many owners who think they will withdraw more in the future and have no incentive to let go now.I think it is necessary for many people to be aware of the situation we are facing.”
Despite these small steps, a pervasive crisis in housing access is reviving senior living and new demands in the face of chronic problems. The 665,000 homes started in 2006 continues to be an unimaginable success today, even though official data shows efforts to improve the pace of construction after the dry frenzy that sparked the Great Recession of 2008.The speed of construction is out of sync with the population growth produced in previous decades. In terms of numbers, the census population has increased by an average of 1 million people since the financial crisis, and according to figures from the Bank of Spain, there is currently a demand for more than 600,000 homes, which will increase by 100,000 each year.
“Legal insecurity is preventing us from acting quickly,” says Xavier Vilajoana, president of the Spanish Promoting Construction Association (APCEspaña), which is actively involved in the construction of social housing. “I know when the project will start, but I don’t know when it will end,” he admitted over the phone. “Getting a building permit is more difficult than building a building taller,” says Pedro Fernández Allen, president of the National Construction Confederation (CNC), a sectoral employer. Both believe that the lack of qualified craftsmen in this field is another cause of timber destruction.
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Both Vilajoana and Fernández Allen believe the 2015 Suero and Urban Renewal Laws will act as a brake. This is because this norm states that if a city plan is created without mandatory procedures (e.g. without environmental assessment or public information), it will be considered invalid. That is, if relevant documentation is missing from any study, the procedure is paralyzed and sent back to the beginning.
“To be able to build the future, we need to present all this complementary information, as is the case with some departmental reports. If they are missing, it can lead to complete paralysis. It means demonstrating and following through. In that case, we have already mentioned that it could take months, even years, for the government to publish these studies, and the results that were suitable for construction have turned out to be barbaric,” Vilajoana laments. “So people have this idea of bureaucratic influence. The media of turning the foundation into something buildable is 16 years old,” he charges.
Desires to reform regulations have been implemented at various times over the past few years, but all have been unsuccessful. The final main player was a government starting in 2024, but was forced to withdraw at the last minute after failing to gain enough support within the coalition and the remaining parties. Economist Gonzalo Bernardos said: “The government has been tasked with producing a report that shows that the poor are inveterate speculators, even though large owners account for only 4.3% of total assets.” “Everything we do politically when it comes to housing is parliamentary arithmetic. Everyone is eager to change this law, but we don’t want to hand this victory over to our opponents,” he added.
Minister de Vivienda has been restrained in recent years, saying that “construction has restarted” in Spain thanks to the European Next Generation Fund, but “it has not yet stepped up into gear.” “Despite the fact that a pace of increase of more than 100,000 homes per year has been achieved, favorable economic conditions and demographic growth due to new ways of living mean that further momentum is needed,” the minister’s spokesperson said. According to the indications, this impulse will be realized in the next state housing plan, where 40% of the total amount of 7 billion will be allocated to the new affordable housing impulse. “As important as building more is deciding to build affordable housing that guarantees access to housing for the social majority,” he added.
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