The economic spokesman for the left-wing block Sumar in Congress, Carlos Martín Urriza, has welcomed the fact that the government is going to eliminate residence visas for foreigners who buy properties worth more than 500,000 euros, known as ‘Golden Visa’, and has called for a ban on buying a house if it is not to live in.
“It should be continued with prohibiting a house in which you are not going to live such as the case in Canada and Amsterdam,” said Martin Urriza in a message posted on the social network X, formerly known as Twitter.
The Canadian government has banned foreign investors from buying homes in the country until 2027 in order to combat problems in accessing a home. For its part, Amsterdam city council agreed in 2021 to limit investment in rental housing to properties of less than 500,000 euros.
In the last legislature, Más País, the party led by Íñigo Errejón, who is now the spokesperson for Sumar in Congress, presented a bill to put an end to this visa and also tried to eliminate it via an amendment to the Housing Law, but it did not succeed in either case.
“We have been insisting for two years and today it seems to be a reality”, Errejón commented in a message published on the social network.
The party’s spokesman and Minister of Culture, Ernest Urtasun, recalled that Sumar demanded the PSOE in the government agreement to eliminate these visas, as it means differentiating between “first and second class citizens”.
“The Golden Visa is a European disgrace. It is unacceptable that someone, just because they are a multimillionaire, should be granted a residence permit”, said Urtasun.
Other voices that have welcomed the measure to combat speculation in housing have been the first secretary of the Bureau of Congress, Gerardo Pisarello, and the deputy spokesperson of Sumar in the Lower House, Aina Vidal.
Although towards the end of the legislature the Government, through the minister José Luis Escrivá, began to open up to the possibility of eliminating this visa, it was not until this Monday when the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, announced that the Council of Ministers is going to start the procedure to eliminate the ‘Golden Visa’, which were approved in 2013 under the administration of Mariano Rajoy.
“Housing is a constitutional right and not a mere speculative business. That is why we are going to eliminate the ‘Golden Visa’, the law passed by the centre right Partido Popular that allows you to obtain a residence visa if you invest more than 500,000 euros in housing in our country”, Sánchez stressed through a message published on X.
According to data from the government, around 94% of the ‘Golden Visa’ are linked to real estate investments (around 10,000 authorisations) and in cities such as Barcelona, Madrid, Malaga, Alicante, Palma and Valencia, which are areas battling high housing prices, this type of operation is the most in demand.
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My family used to live in The Cotswolds and I saw that area ruined by weekend and holiday homes. When I left my village, there was one family left. Over 70% of the homes were unoccupied in winter weeks. The Balearics needs to act, there needs to be a limit on empty homes