Can Barcelona Solve One of the Toughest Housing Crises in Europe?

The Spanish city’s woes mirror a broader affordable-housing crunch spreading rapidly across Europe and driving inequality.

In 33 years, Marga Aguilar never missed a rent payment on her apartment in a Modernist-style building in the heart of Barcelona. The owner of the building had always treated her and the other tenants as if they were family, and kept rents reasonable.

But when the owner died recently, Ms. Aguilar, 62, got a brutal awakening. A Dutch investment fund swooped in to buy the building, — called Casa de la Papallona because it is crowned with a mosaic sculpture of a butterfly — with plans to convert the apartments into lucrative temporary rentals. Tenants received eviction notices, asking them to leave the next month.

“My legs started to buckle,” said Ms. Aguilar, whose 92-year-old father had moved in with her during the pandemic. “We don’t know where we’re going to go — we can’t afford to live anywhere else.”

Spain is confronting a housing crisis that has rapidly become one of the most acute in Europe. Since 2015, nearly one-tenth of the country’s housing stock has been plucked by investors or converted to tourist rentals. The scarcity has helped drive up prices much faster than wages, making affordable homes out of reach for many.