A room for six weeks: housing and culture

On 3 and 4 October 2026, tens of thousands of people demonstrated for housing in cities across Spain. The calls demanded more stable contracts, lower rents, an end to evictions and more public housing. In many marches, a general strike was requested. The Sindicato de Inquilinas (Tenants’ Union) is working to organise it, but as of 4 October, there is no formal call with a date.

The protests did not cease when the marches concluded. On Sunday, a hundred tents and more than two hundred people were present in front of the Valencia City Hall, with the intention of maintaining the encampment. In Madrid's Puerta del Sol, the camp reached its eighth day and was already extending into nearby streets; various reports placed around two thousand tents there. In Málaga, a thousand people had demonstrated on 28 September, and a portion of them began an encampment in the Plaza de la Constitución. On 3 October, another march brought together thousands of people: 4,500 according to the Local Police, 8,000 according to the National Police, and 50,000 according to the organisers.

One day before the weekend mobilisations, Congress had repealed two royal decree-laws on housing approved by the Government on 29 September. Royal Decree-Law 26/2026 contained the general package on the social function of housing, temporary and room rentals, protection against certain evictions, taxation and affordable housing. It was rejected by 178 votes to 172. Royal Decree-Law 27/2026 reinforced the continuity of habitual residence contracts and was rejected by 184 votes to 166. Both were in force for a very brief period and were repealed on 2 October.

The coincidence does not demonstrate that the protests were a response solely to those votes; the crisis predated them. However, the repeal rendered ineffective measures presented as urgent, while the mobilisation demanded precisely stability, price reduction, and protection against the loss of housing.

In cities that have turned culture into part of their image, the contradiction also reaches those who produce it. Not because cultural work deserves different housing from everyone else’s, but because it shares the same need with an added difficulty: low, intermittent income that is hard to prove to the market.

The figures

According to Idealista, renting a standard two-bedroom property in Málaga city required 40% of the net income of an average household in the second quarter of 2026. In the province as a whole, it was 58%. In Madrid, 38%; in Palma, 45%; and in Spain, 39%. These are estimates from a private sector company, prepared using advertised prices and average incomes, not official statistics on actual household expenditure. They can help gauge the gap between income and available supply, but they do not describe the situation of every family.

In 2024, the Bank of Spain documented that rent had grown primarily among young people, the foreign-born population, urban areas and tourist zones. It also noted that demand was increasing faster than supply and that the social rental stock remained limited. The bank itself included tourist use, seasonal rentals and room rentals among the factors limiting residential supply, without reducing a multi-causal problem to these alone.

The pressure will not disappear of its own accord. The projection from the National Statistics Institute places the number of households at 19.76 million in 2026 and at 21.94 million in 2041 if current trends continue. Single-person households would reach 6.72 million, 30.6% of the total. More housing will be required, but also housing suitable for smaller households, well-located and with prices compatible with income levels.

Málaga

In May 2026, the INE estimated 45,176 tourist dwellings advertised on the main platforms in the province of Málaga. This is an experimental statistic obtained through web scraping, not an administrative register of licences. In the capital, the concentration is highly uneven: the municipal average conceals sections of the centre where more than one in every three dwellings is advertised for tourist use.

In June 2024, the City Council tightened the requirements for new tourist accommodation. Since 23 August 2025, it has maintained a suspension on new registrations throughout the municipal area for a maximum of three years or until the amendment of the general plan is approved, whichever comes first. The measure does not, by itself, convert existing accommodation into habitual residences nor does it resolve the lack of public stock. It does, however, acknowledge that residential use requires protection against other, more profitable uses.

Málaga has utilised culture to transform its image: museums, festivals, production, and city branding. The question is not whether it merits that image, but who can remain in the city that sustains it. A cultural policy remains incomplete when it funds programming and visibility, yet accepts that those who research, produce, mediate, install, perform, or care for those activities cannot afford housing near their place of work.

Income that the market does not comprehend

Data regarding cultural income is scarce and does not permit the sector to be treated as a homogeneous block. The socio-labour study by the AISGE Foundation is based on 3,410 surveys of its members, primarily actors and dancers, and collects data from 2023. 48% obtained less than 3,000 euros annually from artistic work; 77%, less than 12,000; and only 7% exceeded 30,000. If only artistic income is counted, 72% remained below the poverty threshold; when adding other sources, 44%.

That result cannot be extrapolated to all cultural professions. It does, however, demonstrate a recognisable reality: an individual may work, produce public value, and string together commissions throughout the year without possessing a regular payslip that satisfies the filters of an estate agency or a landlord. The problem is not merely how much one earns. It also matters how discontinuous income is verified and what additional guarantees the market demands of those who do not fit into stable employment.

A study by the Observatorio Social of the La Caixa Foundation, based on a survey of 1,384 artists and cultural professionals conducted in 2022, adds another indication: only 5% considered that society viewed their work as essential. Material precariousness and a lack of recognition are not the same, but they can reinforce one another.

What a residency provides

An artistic residency provides, for a few weeks or months, workspace, time, guidance, and, in some cases, accommodation. The Centro de Creación Contemporánea de Andalucía (C3A), in Córdoba, announces three-month residencies with space, tools, and a grant of up to 7,000 euros for production and residency expenses. The grant must cover those concepts; the programme's sources do not state that the centre also provides accommodation as a separate benefit.

Genalguacil combines these conditions more comprehensively. In the 2026 Encuentros de Arte, the residency lasted one month and provided accommodation, a maintenance allowance, support for producing the work, and 1,500 euros in fees, excluding taxes. It is a valuable and more complete model, but it remains temporary: it allows for the development of a project during a specific period and does not resolve stable access to housing when the residency concludes.

There is no official census of Spanish residencies that allows us to determine how many are paid, how many provide accommodation, and how many charge those who participate. The available databases conflate funded programmes, defunct calls for applications, and paid retreats. This lack of information is significant: it prevents us from assessing who is eligible to apply, who is excluded, and which working conditions are financed with public funds.

A residency can change a career trajectory and must be valued for what it genuinely offers. It is not a housing policy. When an institution presents one as a sufficient response to precariousness, it risks merely managing the situation: it selects an individual, provides six weeks of shelter, and subsequently returns the problem to the market entirely unchanged.

A responsible residency should cover accommodation without deducting it from already insufficient fees, pay for the work, allow for cohabitation with children or dependants, cover travel expenses, and clearly publish the terms and conditions. Institutional hospitality does not consist of temporarily housing someone in exchange for total availability.

Alternative approaches

Near that Málaga which turns culture into a brand while expelling part of those who sustain it, Genalguacil has developed another model since 1994: producing heritage with artists and residents, integrating works into daily life and using culture against depopulation. Its Encuentros de Arte have brought together over two hundred artists, and the 2026 call received 113 proposals from eleven countries, a testament to the international reach achieved from a rural municipality. The model does not solve access to housing on its own nor is it free of limitations, but it shifts the direction of cultural policy: it does not use the territory as a backdrop, but rather attempts to ensure that creation contributes to sustaining it.

In Barking, East London, A House for Artists offers twelve affordable homes with workspaces and a community room. Rents were set at 65% of the market rate and, in return, residents develop free creative activities with the neighbourhood. The model unites housing, work and community, but raises a note of caution: affordable housing should not become disguised remuneration for free cultural work.

Vienna offers a different lesson, one of scale and universality. The city possesses approximately 220,000 municipal dwellings and has around 200,000 cooperative or subsidised homes. Access is subject to requirements, but the system does not originate from a privileged professional category. Artists benefit as residents, just as those working in healthcare, hospitality, education, or retail do.

That principle is significant. Creating housing exclusively for artists would necessitate deciding who deserves that designation and why they should have priority over another person displaced by the same market. The most equitable response is not to multiply corporate exceptions, but to guarantee affordable housing sufficiently and reserve cultural policies for correcting the specific conditions of cultural work: studios, facilities, fees, mobility, care, and production time.

What can be requested

On 16 December 2025, the European Commission presented the European Affordable Housing Plan. It begins with an unequivocal statement: housing is not merely a commodity, but a fundamental right and a foundation of dignity. It proposes increasing supply, mobilising public and private investment, reviewing state aid, addressing short-term rentals in strained areas and protecting those who bear the brunt of the crisis.

In Spain, the two repealed decrees lasted too short a time to consolidate their measures. Their parliamentary failure does not eliminate the problems they sought to address, nor does it automatically render each of their solutions the only possibility. It compels us to return to discussing them without omitting the central question: what must carry more weight when the yield of an asset conflicts with stable access to a good necessary for exercising all other rights.

Housing is the material condition from which one works, studies, provides care, and participates in public life. It is also the condition from which one creates. Defending it as a right does not imply claiming a privilege for the cultural sector, but it does require that it not be used to embellish cities that expel those who sustain them and that institutions do not confuse temporary aid with a viable life.

A cultural policy that extends beyond programming must examine where the people who create it live. This means supporting a public and social housing stock sufficient for everyone; protecting residential rentals against speculative uses; offering affordable, long-term studios; paying dignified fees; and designing residencies that allow for the inclusion of family, care responsibilities, and economic security.

The mobilisations of recent days have made it visible that housing no longer admits marginal responses. The encampments prolong the protest, and the call for a general strike attempts to shift the conflict from the street to the economic relationship between those who collect rent and those who need a home. As of 4 October, that strike has not yet been formally called. The demand driving it, however, is clearly formulated: housing must cease to function solely as an opportunity for profitability when that profitability prevents people from living.

Six weeks of shelter is not a home.

On the open conversation

This text is published in a personal capacity. It stems from a concern regarding the material conditions that make cultural work possible, but it does not claim an exception for artists nor does it speak on behalf of any organisation. If you work in housing, cultural management, artistic residencies, or urban policy and can provide data or correct this interpretation, write to me.