A new law intended to tackle Catalonia’s housing crisis has ignited a fierce backlash across the Barcelona metropolitan area. Thousands of homeowners accuse the government of retroactively trapping their properties in a state of permanent protection. The measure, which indefinitely extends the subsidised status of their homes, has been labelled an “expropriation” by affected residents who are now organising to challenge it in court.
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The controversy stems from the recent approval of Law 11/2025 by the Parliament of Catalonia. Though designed to complement Spain’s national housing law, it includes a clause that has sent shockwaves through communities with Viviendas de Protección Oficial (VPO), or publicly protected housing. This provision freezes the deregulation of VPO properties in areas designated as “stressed residential markets,” preventing them from entering the free market as originally planned.
The Generalitat de Catalunya, the regional government, defends the move as a necessary bulwark against property speculation and investment funds. Housing affordability is now the paramount concern for citizens. According to the 2025 Urban Cohesion Survey (ECURB), the price of housing is the single biggest factor for people choosing where to live in the Barcelona metropolitan area, rising from 22.7% in 2022 to 27.9% in 2025. The same report found 79.1% of residents believe it is difficult to find suitable, affordable housing, a sharp increase of 20.3 percentage points in just three years.
This administrative decision has effectively blocked some 40,000 homes across Catalonia from entering the open market. Under previous legislation, these properties were scheduled to lose their protected status by 2030, allowing owners to sell or rent them at market rates.
Ground Zero in Badia del Vallès
The law’s impact is most starkly felt in Badia del Vallès, a municipality established in 1975 as a large-scale public housing project to accommodate working-class families. The original property deeds stipulated a 50-year protection period, after which the homes would become private assets. For the last wave of these properties, that deadline was 6 February 2026.
This has created a deep rift in the community. In 2023, one block of 4,156 homes successfully completed its protection period and entered the free market. However, the new law has halted the liberalisation of the remaining 1,216 flats. This created what the town’s mayor, Josep Martínez, described as a profound “comparative grievance,” where neighbours who bought their homes under identical conditions now face vastly different futures.
The Badia del Vallès council, acknowledging the “inequality” created, told digital news outlet Metrópoli Abierta that it is working to have the municipality removed from the stressed market list to unblock the remaining homes.
“Our Life’s Savings, Sequestered”
Widespread discontent has coalesced into the Plataforma d’Afectats per la Llei 11/2025 (Platform of Those Affected by Law 11/2025). The platform estimates 29,000 families are affected across Catalonia. What began in Badia del Vallès has found support in other working-class areas, including L’Hospitalet de Llobregat and neighbourhoods in Barcelona’s Sant Martí district.
Dorian Ros, a spokesperson for the platform, argues that homeowners’ fundamental rights have been violated. “Their rights have been expropriated and their life’s savings, sequestered,” he stated.
“This is a flagrant violation of acquired rights. We signed under certain conditions, we have met them by paying religiously, and now the administration decides to change the end of the movie,” the platform declared in a statement.
The platform argues the law retroactively alters contracts signed decades ago. Such a move, they warn, erodes public trust in institutions. “If we let this pass, we are accepting that the administration can apply retroactive laws indiscriminately,” they said. “Today it’s VPO flats, but tomorrow it could be any other right or property.”
Accusations of a “Zero-Cost” Housing Policy
Critics also accuse the government of using the law as a shortcut to address policy failures. The platform contends that after decades of neglecting to build new social housing, the administration is now trying to “artificially” inflate its stock of protected homes at the expense of working families. This policy, seen as a way to bolster housing statistics without investment, echoes broader concerns over the region’s approach, which some have labelled a ‘populist laboratory’.
“They want to make housing policy at zero cost and at the expense of our savings,” the platform lamented. “Instead of building to offer solutions to new generations, they dedicate themselves to changing the rules of the game for those of us who already bought while complying with the law.”
Homeowners are adamant they are not speculators, a charge often levelled in debates about Barcelona’s heated property market, which has prompted actions like the anti-speculation marathon banner protest. They stress the human cost of the decision.
“When our families went to buy our homes, we made a long-term financial plan,” a platform representative explained. “We took on 20 or 30-year mortgages, knowing the effort involved, but counting on clear pre-existing conditions that said, after a certain time, the flat would be ours freely.” Dorian Ros concluded: “We want to be able to leave a suitable inheritance to our children or have help in retirement with a reverse mortgage. Is it too much to ask that the law in force at the time of purchase be respected?”
The platform is currently collecting signatures with the goal of bringing their case to Spain’s Constitutional Court via the national Ombudsman, setting the stage for a legal battle over property rights and the limits of state intervention in the housing crisis.
