Homes for All heard from Tarek Cheriha Dkik, a housing and anti-racist activist speaking from Girona, northeast Catalonia.
The housing rights movement is led by the Tenants’ Union (Sindicat de Llogateres i Llogaters). The Union calls for protecting renters and fighting for the de-commodification of housing including rent control, increasing public housing stock, and stopping evictions.
The main demands of the movement in a massive demo in November were:
- 50% reduction in rental prices
- indefinite rental contracts
- recovery of vacant and tourist-use homes for residential use
- a ban on real estate speculation.
Then on 5 April 5 2025, there was another demo in over 40 cities across Spain, including Barcelona, Madrid, Valencia, Seville, Málaga, and others. Both Madrid and Barcelona saw over 100,000 protesters.
In a stunning victory, left-wing parties in the parliament of Catalonia responded to the massive movement by reaching an agreement to regulate seasonal and room rents, establish a sanctioning regime for housing violations, and build 50,000 rent controlled housing units.
Activists from the city of Salt’s anti-racist network formed a committee to identify and stop migrant families being evicted from their homes, which later became the Salt Housing Union. They also successfully lobbied to remove a discriminatory condition excluding migrants from public housing, and exposed the racism in the private rental market.
It is clear that a huge movement can challenge the political business as usual, and demands which seemed impossible before can take on a life of their own.
Thank you to Tarek for taking the time to explain how to fight for people and housing!
YouTube Video for Tarek’s presentation (including summary of his comments)
