Squatting in Spain

[1]: 127–128  During the Spanish transition to democracy, residential squatting occurred in cities such as Barcelona, Bilbao, Madrid, Valencia and Zaragoza.

[2]: 119 In the 1970s, there were self-built informal settlements or slums as new industrialised zones in cities drew working class migrants from rural areas.

[3]: 95  A contemporary slum is Cañada Real, where an estimated 40,000 to 50,000 people live along a 15km track formerly used as a drovers' road, on the boundary shared by Madrid and Rivas Vaciamadrid.

A company called Desokupa ("De-Squat") became notorious for evicting squatters without a legal process, for example La Yaya social centre in Argüelles, Madrid.

[8] During the COVID-19 pandemic in Spain, around 600 Roma people squatted properties on the Costa del Sol which had been impounded as part of Operation Malaya.

[16] The number of squatted social centres in Barcelona grew from under thirty in the 1990s to around sixty in 2014, as recorded by Info Usurpa (a weekly activist agenda).

[3]: 114 The Basque Country is another area where a high number of houses have been occupied and social centres take the form of gaztetxes [eu].

[19] As a result of the Great Recession in the late 2000s, over 50% of young people aged between 16 and 34 were still living with their parents in 2011, since they were unable to afford to buy or rent.

[12]: 184  This situation led to the foundation of the Plataforma de Afectados por la Hipoteca (PAH) (Platform for People Affected by Mortgages) in Barcelona in 2009.

[12]: 187  The PAH used a variety of tactics to support tenants under threat of eviction, including street protests against banks and legal challenges.