State-Led Actions Reigniting the Financialization of Housing in Spain

ABSTRACT Since the 2008 economic recession, state intervention in the real estate sector has strengthened. This article explains how housing financialization was reignited in Spain following key policy reforms in 2013. We argue that Spanish authorities managed to strategically recreate a finance-friendly environment to attract global investors. They combined financial policies, other deregulatory reforms and neoliberal measures in a coordinated manner we call a policy package. Our analysis provides evidence of the legal and political arrangements at various state levels that effectively facilitated the reanimation of a new cycle of housing financialization which caused rising inflation in prices and distress in tenants’ rights. This approach contributes to the understanding of how state-led actions foster a spatial fix to overcome financial crises by granting global speculative funds extraordinary benefits. In addition, we show how this process occurred with poor democratic accountability and was also confronted by various forms of social contestation.