Housing in barcelona: a longstanding structural problem

Abstract

The topicality and urgency of the housing problem often conceal its structural nature. The housing of the working classes has been a persistent problem, shared by most large cities, and a long-term approach is called for. An approach that is attentive, at the same time, to the international context and the diversity of trajectories, as well as to the responses and reciprocal influences between cities. But, above all, attentive to the specificities of each path, its inflections, its legacies and its powerful inertias. The article approaches, with a long-term perspective, the history of the housing of the working classes in Barcelona, in order to better understand to what extent the past weighs on the present and, consequently, on the options for the future. At the same time, as a case study, it can be useful for comparative approaches to the question of housing in large cities, and can offer lines of exploration of other Spanish cities to reveal some of the specificities of our country in the European context. © 2025 Universidad de Sevilla. All rights reserved.