The story coming to an end had it all: surprise and hope, sadness and dismay, the bitterest defeats and the triumphs that brought joy to an entire nation. Twenty-one years ago, Lionel Messi began writing the first page of his story with the Argentina national team, and on Tuesday, October 6, 2026, he will write the last. Between that ill-fated debut against Hungary on August 17, 2005 — when he was sent off 43 seconds after stepping onto the pitch — and the match with Benin that will close his international career, Messi has already become a legend of assured immortality.
© Icon Sportswire (Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
Tens of thousands of people marched across Spain on Saturday, 3rd October, demanding action over rising rents, evictions and access to housing, a day after parliament rejected two government measures intended to strengthen protections for tenants.
In Madrid, the government delegation estimated attendance at around 70,000, while organisers put the figure considerably higher. Demonstrations were organised in more than 50 cities. In Valencia, clashes broke out near a property investment conference at the City of Arts and Sciences, while protests elsewhere were largely peaceful. The nationwide demonstrations followed several days of mobilisation by Spanish tenants’ organisations.
The immediate political trigger came on Friday, when the Congress of Deputies rejected two housing decrees proposed by Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s minority government.
The government had approved a package of emergency housing measures including stronger protection against evictions for vulnerable households, changes affecting property investment companies and measures intended to increase the availability of affordable rental accommodation. A second decree included provisions for the automatic renewal of some rental contracts.
The measures were defeated after the Popular Party, Vox and Junts opposed them. Junts argued that the proposals would not resolve the underlying shortage of housing and risked discouraging property owners from putting homes onto the market.
Housing has become one of Spain’s most politically sensitive domestic issues, particularly in Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia and other cities where rising demand has coincided with limited supply, strong tourism and a large short-term rental market.
The protests have also been shaped by the eviction of 87-year-old Maricarmen Abascal from the Madrid flat where she had lived for decades. The case attracted national attention and became a focal point for campaigners demanding stronger protection for tenants.
Spain has already taken measures against short-term tourist accommodation. EU Today reported last year on Spain’s move to block more than 65,000 Airbnb listings that the authorities said did not comply with regulatory requirements.
Barcelona has gone further, announcing plans to end approximately 10,000 tourist-apartment licences by 2028 as the city seeks to return properties to the long-term residential market.
The argument, however, extends beyond holiday rentals.
Spain faces a structural shortage of housing in areas experiencing strong population and employment growth. Tenant organisations favour stronger rent controls, longer contracts and greater restrictions on institutional investors. Property organisations and political opponents of tighter controls argue that excessive intervention can reduce rental supply and discourage construction.
The same debate is increasingly visible across Europe.
Figures published by Eurostat on 1 October showed EU house prices rising by 4.7 per cent in the second quarter of 2026 compared with the same period last year. Rents increased by 3 per cent. Compared with the first quarter, house prices rose by 1.2 per cent and rents by 0.7 per cent.
EU Today recently examined how Berlin’s housing shortage and rapidly rising rents became a central issue in the city’s election campaign, illustrating how affordability has moved up the political agenda across several European capitals.
Brussels has also become more involved. The European Commission’s first European Affordable Housing Plan, presented in December 2025, focuses on increasing supply, mobilising investment, accelerating construction and giving authorities additional scope to address short-term rentals in areas experiencing housing pressure.
EU Today reported when the plan was launched that it included proposals for new action on short-term rentals and housing investment. The Commission has since begun building a European Housing Alliance bringing together governments, cities, regions and housing organisations.
The Commission estimates that house prices across the EU have risen by more than 60 per cent since 2013, while average rents have increased by around 20 per cent. It has nevertheless stressed that most housing policy remains under national, regional and local authority.
Spain therefore represents one of the more acute versions of a wider European problem: how to increase supply while deciding how far governments should regulate rents, tourist accommodation and investment in residential property.
Saturday’s demonstrations show that the issue is no longer confined to housing policy.
For Sánchez, the defeat of the two decrees has exposed once again the difficulty of securing parliamentary majorities for major legislation. For Spain’s opposition parties, the dispute centres increasingly on whether government intervention is helping to expand housing supply or restricting it.
For tenants facing higher rents, the immediate question is whether any new legislation can materially increase the number of homes they can afford.
Her life could inspire one of those biopics about personal triumph, but Jahel Queralt, 43, says her fate is pure chance. The jurist, PhD and professor of political law at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona went from growing up in an isolated house without water or electricity to feeling “like you’ve gatecrashed a party in the wrong shoes” when she arrived in the world of academia. It happened in 2007, in Oxford, when she met Gerald A. Cohen, a leading figure in analytical Marxism and one of the mentors of her theses. He was so approachable that the young woman let her guard down while eating with the other fellows in the All Souls dining hall, inside the most elitist of the Oxford colleges. There she uttered the forbidden word that starts with F: “You do this in Spain and you are totally fucked,” she stated, and immediately heard the rest of the diners clear their throats. People still ask her at parties if she is “the girl who said fucked in the All Souls dining hall.” That, she says near her son’s public school a few yards from the Barcelona zoo, is what happens when “you learned English watching The Wire.”
Brett Christophers, 55, has spent years studying the strategies of large corporations. He began by examining big investment banks such as JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs. But he soon noticed those names being pushed aside on the agendas of politicians and influencers by investment firms like BlackRock and Blackstone. It was not sudden: for decades they had quietly gained ground, and now control almost every aspect of a citizen’s daily life — the home they live in, the water they wash with, the road or railway they use to get to work, or the hospital they visit for an emergency. That is what Christophers, an economic geographer at the Institute for Housing and Urban Research at Uppsala University (Sweden), has been documenting in multiple studies and, more recently, in books such as Our Lives in Their Portfolios: Why Asset Managers Own the World and Rentier Capitalism: Who Owns the Economy, and Who Pays for It?.
A merchant named Robert Keyne showed up crestfallen before the General Court of Massachusetts in Puritan Boston in 1639. His offense: trying to sell at the highest possible price and buy at the lowest possible price, putting his profits above the interests of the community. The judges showed no mercy: they fined him £200 for a practice they described as “extremely wicked and corrupt” and for having embraced “false principles.” Yet those are the same principles that now seem completely natural to us and structure our entire lives.
Naomi Lautier is 14 years old. Born in 2011 in Paris, she paints as if the world were speaking to her in its own language. There isn’t a single learned gesture in her work, nor any desire to fit into recognizable traditions. Her art springs from elsewhere: it has a direct, almost physical connection with what she sees, what she feels and what she needs to express.
© Naomi Lautier y Eugine Hrotchuk
© Naomi Lautier y Eugine Hrotchuk
© Naomi Lautier y Eugine Hrotchuk
© Naomi Lautier y Eugine Hrotchuk
© Naomi Lautier y Eugine Hrotchuk
© Naomi Lautier y Eugine Hrotchuk
Aunque el ritmo de los ciclistas en el interior de Barcelona es uno de los temas más contestados en la movilidad urbana, el Bicing de Barcelona prepara una de las mayores ampliaciones de su historia. Según información municipal, el próximo contrato del servicio elevará la flota de las 8.000 bicicletas actuales hasta las 12.000 unidades, lo que supone aumentar la oferta un 50%.
Ahora bien, para ver todos estos cambios habrá que esperar. El nuevo contrato se licitará en otoño de 2026 y el servicio renovado empezará a funcionar cuando finalice la concesión actual, a finales de 2028. La ampliación llega en un momento en el que el Bicing supera ya las 170.000 personas abonadas.
La red ya ha crecido durante los últimos años. Barcelona dispone actualmente de unas 8.000 bicicletas. De ellas, 5.000 son eléctricas y 3.000 mecánicas, un reparto que refleja el creciente peso de las bicicletas asistidas dentro del servicio, cada vez mayor.
En esta planificación, también aumentará el número de puntos donde recogerlas y devolverlas, faciltando así que más ciudadnos puedan beneficiarse de su capilaridad. De las 519 estaciones contabilizadas en 2023, la ciudad se ha marcado como objetivo alcanzar las 593 en 2027.
La ampliación del Bicing coincide con el crecimiento de la infraestructura ciclista. Barcelona cuenta actualmente con unos 270 kilómetros de carriles bici y alrededor de 1.200 kilómetros de vías ciclables si se suman calles 30 y otras vías pacificadas.
El uso también continúa al alza. Según el último balance municipal, correspondiente a 2025, la circulación por los carriles bici aumentó un 17% en un año y nueve de cada diez puntos de medición registraron incrementos.
Entre las últimas actuaciones destacan los nuevos trazados de Via Laietana y la Diagonal, mientras que para otoño de 2026 está prevista la finalización de la renovación de la Meridiana entre Felip II y Fabra i Puig, que incorporará un carril bici más ancho y segregado.
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