Spain ends “golden visas” to stop real estate speculation

Spain will eliminate calls “golden visas” which gives to foreigners who invest half a million euros in real estate properties, to stop the speculation suffered by many Spanish cities, the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, announced on Monday.

The government is going to “eliminate the granting of the so-called ‘Golden visa’ that allows access to the residence regime when investing more than half a million euros in real estate“said the socialist leader in a trip near Seville, in the south.

This suppression, which will be approved on Tuesday at the weekly meeting of the Government, will allow us to fight against “speculative investment in housing that harms “many young people and families” who want to access housing, he continued.

Golden visas allow non-European citizens to obtain a three-year residence and work permit, as long as they invest at least 500,000 euros (more than US$540,000) in a Spanish company or property.

They were introduced in 2013 by the conservative government of Mariano Rajoywhich wanted to boost investment in the country in the midst of the economic downturn caused by the financial and real estate crisis.

“Today, 94 out of every hundred visas of this type are linked to real estate investment and are logically concentrated in such important cities as Barcelona, ​​Madrid, Malaga, Alicante, the Balearic Islands and also the city of Valencia.“, argument Sanchez.

“That is to say”, he continued, the cities that face “a highly stressed housing market and where it is almost impossible to find decent housing for those who already live and work in them and pay their taxes”.

Several southern European countries, which used similar regimes to attract investment during the financial crisis, have decided in recent months to tighten or eliminate this highly contested exceptional regime.

In early 2023, Portugal It stopped issuing them, in a context of skyrocketing housing prices. At the end of March, Greece tightened the rules governing the granting of these exceptional residence permits.

These visasThey are a European shame. It cannot be that someone, just because they are a multimillionaire, is granted a residence permit“, stated this Monday Ernest Urtasun, spokesman for the far-left Sumar party, partners of the socialists in the government, and Minister of Culture.

In 2019, Brussels expressed concern about these practices, which primarily benefit wealthy Chinese and Russians, stating that they presented risks to the EU, “in particular in matters of security, money laundering and tax fraud”.