In Spain, little has been built, only the soil amenable to urbanization and the paper needed to keep the business moving forward remain an insurmountable obstacle. These three phrases have been flooding real estate conversations for some time, and they’re resorted to whether they’re on one side or the other of supply and demand. Are you sure? partially. There is further construction underway which has been going on for a few years, although it is being completed at a slower pace; More construction work is being done than last year, but bureaucracy has not been streamlined enough to start work sooner. The different parts involved in this sector share the same diagnosis: although the result is slightly different, the music, at the moment, still sounds the same.
Statistics from the Housing Observatory and the Ministry of Finance show how quickly construction is changing now. While in the first quarter of 2025 they started building 31,179 free homes, the highest volume in this period (and any other period) of the past seven years, only 18,642 homes were delivered, the lowest total in the first three months of the year since 2021. With homes protected, the behavior was the same: 3,237 received the official qualification, more than at the beginning of 2024; But only 2,497 finally got it, fewer than the previous year.
The slight brightness of some of these statistics pales in comparison to the records of 2024. The estimate for ejected materials – an indicator that reflects planned investment in construction projects – this year reached 6,426.95 million euros, 17.8% higher than the previous calculation, according to the annual observatory bulletin. Of this total amount, 4,881.57 million (76%) went towards residential construction, including new business, extensions and renovations. The volume represents an 18.3% increase over the forecast for 2023.
Thanks to this small mountain, the landscapes of many cities are now filled with cranes. “This is not a bad time to be an architect,” says Sigfredo Heras, dean of the school Official Architects of Madrid (COAM). “We have as much work now as we did before the pandemic,” he admits. In his opinion, the buildable floor that does not move is still “pure speculation.” He added: “The price is rising every day, and there are many owners who do not have any incentives to get rid of it now, because they believe that in the future they will be able to withdraw more. I think it will be necessary for many people to be aware of the situation we are going through.”
Despite these small steps, the widespread crisis in access to home has revived the lives of the elderly and new demands in the face of a problem that has become chronic. Although official data shows efforts to improve the pace of construction after the drought that caused the Great Recession in 2008 – the 665,000 homes started in 2006 are still an unimaginable success today – the speed of construction is not keeping pace with the increase in population that has been produced in the past few decades. In numbers: The population has increased by one million people since the financial crisis, and there is currently demand for more than 600,000 homes, according to Bank of Spain estimates, which will increase by an additional 100,000 homes every year.
“The lack of legal security prevents us from moving faster,” says Xavier Villaguana, president of the Association of Promoters and Builders of Spain (APCEspaña), which is actively involved in public housing construction. “You know when you start a project, but you don’t know when it’s going to finish,” he admitted over the phone. “It is more difficult to get a license than to lift a building,” says Pedro Fernández Allen, president of the National Confederation of Construction (CNC), the sector employer. They both consider the lack of qualified workmanship in this sector to be another damage caused by wood removal.
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Villaguana and Fernández Allen consider the Soelo and Urban Rehabilitation Law of 2015 to be an obstacle, because this standard states that if an urban plan is prepared without basic procedures (for example, without an environmental assessment or without public information), it is considered null and void. Thus, if the relevant document is missing from any study, the procedure is paralyzed and, moreover, is returned to the beginning.
“For the future to be buildable, it is necessary to provide all this supplementary information, as is the case in some sectoral reports. Any lack of it is the cause of complete paralysis, which means that it does not allow you to prove and follow up. If that is the case, we have already said that the administration may take months or even years to hand these studies aside, and the results have become barbaric when they are constructible,” laments Villajoana. “So that people have an idea of the impact involved in bureaucracy: the media that turns the foundation into buildable is 16 years old,” he deplores.
The desire to reform regulations has emerged at various times over the past few years, but all have had no results. The last party was the government that began in 2024, which ended with its withdrawal at the last minute after failing to obtain sufficient support within the coalition, among the rest of the parties. “The government was commissioned to prepare a report showing that the poor are deep speculators, while large owners make up only 4.3% of total property,” says economist Gonzalo Bernardos. He added: “Everything we do in politics regarding housing is parliamentary calculations. Although everyone is ready to reform this law, they do not want to give this victory to the opponent.”
Since the Ministry of Life has cracked down on this in recent years, thanks to European Next Generation funds, construction has been “revitalized” in Spain, although “there is still a lack of higher equipment placement.” A ministry spokesman says: “Despite achieving a growth rate of more than 100,000 homes per year, demographic growth as a result of a healthy economy and new forms of life means we need more momentum.” This drive will bear fruit, according to indicators, with the government’s next housing plan, which will allocate 40% of the total $7,000 million to the drive for new affordable housing. He added: “It is as important to build more as it is to build well. Rather, it is important to make a decision and build affordable housing that ensures that the social majority has access to housing.”
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