Of the 250 social rental flats run by L’Hospitalet de Llobregat’s city council, only 11 families pay their rent every month.
Eleven. Out of 250.
The rest of the count, from this El Debate news piece by Yolanda Canales (12 April 2025): 14 flats empty, 40 squatted, and families who have lived there rent-free for ten years, with debts of up to 63,000 euros per flat. An unpaid rent expires after three years, so between 2014 and 2023 the council lost about 2.3 million euros it can no longer claim. Of the 250 flats, 200 belong to the council and about 50 come through an agreement with the SAREB, Spain’s “bad bank”.
The catch: the figures come from the local opposition, the PP, through its spokesperson Sonia Esplugas, and the piece doesn’t include the council’s side. Numbers to keep, verdict pending. Her other point: plenty of neighbours who do qualify can’t get one of these flats.
For scale, what “qualifying” means there today. L’Hospitalet is in zone A of Catalan protected housing, and in the general regime (the most common kind of protected flat) a household’s weighted income can’t go over 5 times the IRSC, Catalonia’s reference income: 9,622.18 euros a year in 2026. Weighted for the zone and the size of the household, that’s at most 64,147.87 euros a year for one person, 66,131.82 for two, 68,976.20 for three and 71,275.41 for four or more (official table, for flats qualified under the 2014 housing plan; those qualified since February 2025 follow a newer decree).
What I’d like to know is what happened next. Did anyone start collecting? If I find out, it goes here.