Chaos in Spain as protesters get set to march in 40 cities

The Spanish housing crisis is set to reach boiling point this Saturday, April 5, as tens of thousands of locals will take to the streets. United under the slogan "Let’s end the housing business", Spaniards will protest in some 40 cities across the country.

Locals struggling to pay their rent or unable to afford to buy properties will rally to demand more effective measures to combat the crisis. The protests will begin in the capital, Madrid, followed by the likes of Barcelona, Valencia, Malaga and even Palma de Mallorca, in the Balearics. The nationwide protests could become the biggest rally related to housing rights in recent memory.

Nearly all of Spain’s major provincial capitals and major cities are set to take part. In Madrid, the march will begin at Atocha at 12pm local time (11am BST), while in Barcelona, ​​the rally will start at Plaza Espanya at 6pm local time (5pm BST), The Local reported.

Valencia’s protest will start at 6.30pm local time (5.30pm BST) in the Town Hall Square, in Palma de Mallorca it will kick off at noon (11am BST) from Plaça Espanya and in Málaga it will begin at 11.30pm local time (10.30pm BST) in Plaza de la Merced.

Other provincial capitals and major cities set to join the call for decent and affordable housing include Alicante, Seville, Granada, Cadiz, Zaragoza, Santiago, Ibiza, Mahón in Menorca, and even as far south as the Canary Islands. Residents are set to take to the streets in San Isidro in Tenerife and Puerto del Rosario in Fuerteventura.

Leaders of the protests are demanding an immediate drop in rents, an immediate solution to the more than 3.8 million homes that currently lie empty across Spain, the outlawing of eviction companies and the prohibition of evicting vulnerable families without alternative housing.

They have also vowed that the country’s housing protest movement will not be silenced.

The housing situation has become a major problem in Spain. Last year, around one in five transactions involved foreigners buying homes in Spain. As a result, the Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC) filed a motion in the Spanish Congress to stop foreigners from buying homes across the nation unless they can prove they have lived in Spain for five consecutive years.

According to the pro-independence party, 60% of homes in Catalonia are purchased without mortgages or financing.

Meanwhile, property business leaders in the Balearics have warned citizens being priced out from the housing market risk being effectively "expelled" from their communities without action from authorities.

A report by property portal pisos.com last month suggested that the average cost of renting across the country has skyrocketed more than 20% over the past five years. Additionally, recent data by leading property website Fotocasa revealed that rents in the last decade have increased by 78% and property prices by at least a third.

Spain’s Tenants' Union, one of dozens of groups and unions involved in the mass protests, said that "exorbitant rents are the main cause of impoverishment of the working class and a barrier to accessing housing," adding that a small "rent-seeking" minority is enriching itself at the expense of "economically suffocating a large part of society”.