Carlos Moreno, a 63-year-old doorman from Madrid, said the cost of renting a flat for even a week has become prohibitively expensive
Spaniards “can’t afford” holidays in their own country anymore, it has been warned. In the land of sun, sea and soaring prices, a week at the beach is out of reach for many — so they go abroad instead – according to reports.
Carlos Moreno, a 63-year-old doorman from Madrid, said the cost of renting a flat for even a week has become prohibitively expensive. He told The Times: “We used to pay about €1,200 for an apartment for 15 days. Now a week costs that much or even double. We can’t afford a hotel and we don’t fancy camping.”
Wendy Davila from Alicante also told Travel And Tour World: “Prices are exorbitant. The whole coast of Spain is very expensive. Now you can’t vacation wherever you want, but wherever you can afford.”
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Rather than heading to Spain’s popular coastal locations, locals are venturing inland, with 1.7 million Spaniards last year preferring central destinations over beaches.
Rents rose by 80% over the past decade, outpacing wage increases, and a recent Bank of Spain report estimated that almost half of the Spain’s tenants spend 40% of their income on rent and utility bills, compared with an EU average of 27%.
The prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, outlined a 12-point plan in a speech last Monday to ease what he called the country’s “housing situation emergency”.
“If we don’t act, European and Spanish society will end up divided into two kinds of people,” he said. “Those who get one or more houses from their parents and can spend most of their income on things like education and travel, and those who spend their lives working to pay the rent and who end up as old people who don’t own the home they live in.”
“The prime minister used the words ‘housing emergency’, and I think that’s what it is in many ways,” said Ignasi Martí, the director of Esade Business School’s social innovation unit and the head of its decent housing observatory.
“The supply isn’t there, people can’t access housing, and housing situations that just aren’t decent have become normalised over the past few years.”