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Getting a foot on the property ladder has become a near-impossible dream for many people living in Spain, particularly the younger generation. With affordable housing non-existent and wage increases completely halted, renting is now the only option for most. But landlords are well aware of the supply problem, and rents have skyrocketed to never-before-seen levels.

 

As a result, Madrid Tenants’ Union is calling for a mass mobilisation across the country on April 5, a ‘strike’ of renters to demand fairer prices and more access to housing. Ahead of the official protest day, the group is urging everyone concerned to head to Plaza Peñuelas on Sunday March 23 “to hear firsthand how to organise our tenant power to stop rentierism.”

 

Shortly before Christmas last year, 29 families in Salou and El Vendrell in Catalonia launched a rent strike, refusing to hand over two monthly payments in protest against the rising costs.

 

The residents were demanding “the extension of the rental contracts that have already expired and the withdrawal of the legal proceedings opened to evict families”.

 

They also called for the elimination of “abusive clauses and overpricing to return to the original prices.”

 

The Madrid union has similar demands and has been staging smaller demonstrations and sit-ins for months now.

 

“Dozens of struggling blocks have said we're staying, and they're not leaving their homes. We also have neighbours who are considering cooperativising their blocks and taking them off the market,” a spokesperson explained.

 

Regarding the strike action in the capital on April 5, the union has already announced that protestors will be deployed “across territories to set up tenant pickets to plaster Madrid with all the materials we have prepared.”

 

What began as a plan has become a reality, and they are calling for the largest possible presence to “make history together.”

 

 

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