Barcelona Before the 2027 Election: Where Are the Housing Promises?

Barcelona is entering the final political year before the May 2027 municipal election with a housing paradox that is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore: there is no shortage of announcements, plans and targets, but there remains a shortage of homes residents can actually move into.

Housing has become one of the defining issues of Mayor Jaume Collboni’s administration. The city government regularly highlights homes delivered, projects under construction, land made available, financing secured and agreements with public authorities, cooperatives and other organisations.

Those initiatives matter. But they are not the same thing.

A housing project can be announced without being approved, approved without being financed, and financed without construction having started. And a construction site is not yet a home available to a family.

For voters looking for affordable housing, that distinction is crucial.

Barcelona’s 2026 municipal budget allocates around €240 million to housing policies, a substantial increase on the previous year. That level of public spending demands more than political headlines. The key questions are how much has actually been spent, how much has been committed and, above all, how many completed homes have been delivered.

Recent reporting indicates that municipal investment through IMHAB in the construction of protected housing fell to around €35 million in 2025, compared with annual levels above €80 million previously. The city argues that this reflects a greater reliance on cooperation with the Generalitat, housing cooperatives and other partners.

There is nothing inherently wrong with that strategy. If partnerships produce more homes at lower public cost, taxpayers should welcome them.

But the test must remain results.

In November 2025, the city said 1,605 protected public homes had been delivered during the current mandate, while setting a further target of 1,500 homes before the end of the term. It also points to thousands more homes in the pipeline.

These figures should be presented separately. A completed home is not the same as a home under construction. Secured land is not the same as a construction contract. And a long-term target is not the same as a home available today.

A current example illustrates the point. Barcelona has secured financing for 641 public affordable-rental homes, with construction scheduled in phases and completion extending into 2029 and 2030.

That is a significant commitment. But a financed housing programme is not the same as homes already available to residents. The same applies to Barcelona’s latest agreement with the trade unions CCOO and UGT to promote 1,500 public homes over the next ten years. The first 179 homes are expected to be activated in 2026, but the wider programme extends well beyond the 2027 election.

Again, the project may ultimately be successful. But a ten-year programme should not be presented to voters in 2027 as though all 1,500 homes already existed.

The same principle applies to the city’s plan to eliminate around 10,000 tourist-apartment licences by 2028. Some properties may return to the residential market, but a potential future home is not a home recovered for residents today.

This leads to the most important question in Barcelona’s housing debate: how much public money does it actually cost to deliver one completed, occupied affordable home?

Residents deserve a simple annual scorecard: budgeted versus actually spent; homes announced versus financed; financed versus under construction; under construction versus completed; and completed versus actually occupied.

Barcelona does not necessarily need fewer housing announcements. It needs better accounting. Because for residents, a public home does not exist when it appears in a presentation.

It exists when someone gets the keys.

That is the number Barcelona should have to explain to voters before they go to the polls in May 2027.