Barcelona is the rental hub in Spain.

One of the neighborhoods in Raval, Barcelona, has the highest number of rental housing units in Spain according to census data. The same company owns a thousand apartments, all of which are rented out. The mini-neighborhood of cheap houses, where people displaced from slums lived in the 1920s during the 1929 World Expo, now belongs to the city. Or the old, small, and neglected residential buildings in the poor area of Raval. But there are also luxurious homes in the wealthy upper zone. These are some of the areas in Barcelona with the most rental apartments in all of Spain. According to the 2021 INE census, the capital of Catalonia has the largest clusters of rental housing in Spain: 31.1% of the primary housing (where someone is registered) in the city is rental.

Of the 50 census sections in the country with the highest rental percentage, 30 are located in the capital of Catalonia. In all of these areas, rental housing makes up more than 49% of the total, and with one exception, these are neighborhoods with below-average income for the city. Out of the 30 neighborhoods in Barcelona, the overwhelming majority (25) are in the Ciutat Vella district, the most central and tourist-intensive area. Ten of them are in the Raval neighborhood, which is home to the most vulnerable population. All of this is happening in a city where rental issues are a major topic of public discussion: prices continue to set new records and are rising four times faster than residents' incomes.

The situation is particularly difficult in Raval. It is a very dense area: 47,000 residents in just over a square kilometer, and the streets are always full of people. 51.9% of the population are migrants, mainly from Pakistan, Bangladesh, and the Philippines. There are 1,832 residential buildings, of which 906 were built before 1900. The average apartment size is 64 square meters. There are tough nights due to the heat in the summer. And there are very neglected areas where the lowest incomes do not even reach half of the city's average level (16,750 euros net per person per year) and amount to less than 8,000 euros per year per person.

According to representatives of strong associations trying to tackle the issues in the neighborhood, Carmela Turro from the Raval Neighborhood Network says that "the area is a mix of two opposing realities: poverty and gentrification." "There are neglected areas with old houses and cases of overcrowding out of necessity; as well as areas close to La Rambla with tourist apartments. There are elderly people with long-standing incomes, vulnerable migrants, and wealthy foreigners... as well as apartments owned by investment funds that remain empty after evictions, and some of them are turning into drug dens." In the same organization, Miguel Ángel Lozano adds that in Raval, a quarter of residential buildings are owned by large landlords, and of these, 1,200 are social housing owned by administrations or funds. "The situation is very difficult, especially in cases of irregular maintenance; these are the most neglected apartments in the area. Add to this low incomes and low rents...

Among the districts of Barcelona with a high percentage of rentals, there are also some peculiarities: the area of cheap housing developed by the administration in Can Peguera; a census section in the affluent neighborhood of Sant Gervasi - La Bonanova (where the average income is 47% higher than the city average), where 55% of the housing is rented out. Located between Mandri and Ciutat de Balaguer streets, this area has many properties with vertical ownership and rental apartments. There are luxurious buildings with concierges and spacious living areas.

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Apartments in one of the blocks of the Cevasa company on Meridian Avenue in Barcelona.

massiliano minocri

Or the highest rental section in Spain, where all apartments are rented out. Located around the Meridiana shopping center, a mall that was attacked by the BAS in 1987, where all one thousand apartments in their blocks (red brick, green awnings, 14 floors) are rented and owned by the company Cevasa. The 2011 INE population census estimates the share of rental housing at 97.7%; while the 2021 census, which divided the neighborhood into two parts, reduces it to 65-61%. "This must be a mistake," say sources in the company, "because all the apartments in the complex are rented out, no one could sell them, as the rights belong to Cevasa." The largest tenants' association is located in this area. The difference in the case of these sections, as explained by INE to this newspaper, is that only 10% of the housing was categorized through administrative registers (while the average for the rest of Spain is 75%). The remaining data was obtained based on external frequencies from the "Main Population and Housing Census Survey."

There is no single reason explaining why Barcelona is the epicenter of rentals in Spain, but expert and president of the Metropolitan Housing Observatory, Carme Trilla, points to the main one: "Renting is an urban phenomenon; in rural areas, people have their own homes, but in Barcelona, entire neighborhoods like Eixample have been rented out. And Ciutat Vella also emerged from renting. The history of Barcelona is a history of renting: a developer would take an apartment for themselves, and the rest of the building would be rented out." In the 1960s, more than 70% of apartments were rented, Trilla continues, discussing the city's brick heritage. "But the Rental Law, LAU, froze rentals, and much was lost; moreover, what was built in the 60s, 70s, and 80s was no longer intended for renting. However, renting still held weight. In the early 2000s, it fell below 30%, and now it has recovered to 38%."

The 38% figure mentioned by Trilla differs from the percentage indicated in the INE census because it is based on a "reliable, accurate, and up-to-date" database from the Catalan Institute of Land, which holds deposits for rental agreements. There are 200,000 of them, and if we add the remaining 50,000 old rental payments and those who do not make a deposit, the estimate comes to nearly 290,000 apartments out of a total of 754,000 primary residences in the city.

In addition to Raval, Ciutat Vella has other neighborhoods with very high rental rates. Areas like the Gothic Quarter or El Born, closer to La Rambla or Via Laietana, where socioeconomic indicators are improving, buildings are in better condition, apartments are larger, and both old and new residents with higher incomes are renting properties that are unaffordable for locals. The top 30 also includes four sections in Barceloneta, a former fishing district, where small apartments of 28 square meters cost astronomical amounts due to their historical value and proximity to the beach. In any case, Ciutat Vella appears in a recent study as the district of Barcelona where residents spend the highest percentage of their salary on rent: 63.4%. With rental prices at historical highs (in Barcelona, they exceed the minimum wage, reaching 1,123 euros in the second half of this year according to Incasol data), experts insist that the gap between the rise in housing costs and the growth of salaries "intensifies the structural crisis of housing affordability." In 2022, rental payments in Barcelona increased four times more than family incomes, warned the Metropolitan Housing Observatory this week. The Metropolitan Institute also reminds us that in Barcelona and its surroundings, 28.1% of renters have low incomes; 59.5% have middle incomes, and only 12.4% have high incomes. Sociologist and researcher at this institute, Sergio Porcel, points out that "access to home ownership is becoming increasingly difficult, which is changing the traditional profile of renters," but young people and low-income migrants still prevail and are particularly vulnerable to the spiraling price increases.

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