Couple sleeps in car in Arteixo after losing their rental home
Juan José and Isabel have spent three nights in a car in Arteixo after losing their €400 flat. The case highlights the failure of designated stressed housing areas.
English · Original discussion in Spanish · Published
Three nights in a car: the impossible housing situation in the A Coruña area
What separates Arteixo from A Coruña? Sometimes, a night in a car. Juan José Jiménez Montero, 55, and Isabel Otero Martínez, 57, spent their third night inside a car after the €400 contract they had been paying in Vilarrodís (Arteixo) for twelve years expired. The owner's notice came two years earlier. They have found nothing affordable.
The key detail: Arteixo is not a stressed housing area
Galicia has only declared two municipalities as stressed housing areas: A Coruña (from June 2025 to 2028) and Santiago (from July 2026). Arteixo, bordering A Coruña, is left out. The rent cap does not apply there; the owner sets the price they want. The measure does not resolve the pressure, it shifts it to the metropolitan belt.
Reading the drama
One view holds that the couple could move to an inland village, where flats cost €300. True, but it forgets that rural employment is the same problem that pushed them to the city, and that petrol and commuting eat up the savings. Another view points to the failure of the design: protection exists where you can no longer enter and disappears where the excluded go.
Arteixo is Inditex's fiefdom. The paradox needs no emphasis: a hundred metres from the warehouses, two people have made a car their home. The housing law continues to draw maps that do not reflect real life. Or perhaps they do, all too well.
What separates Arteixo from A Coruña? Sometimes, a night in a car. Juan José Jiménez Montero, 55, and Isabel Otero Martínez, 57, spent their third night inside a car after the €400 contract they had been paying in Vilarrodís (Arteixo) for twelve years expired. The owner's notice came two years earlier. They have found nothing affordable.
The key detail: Arteixo is not a stressed housing area
Galicia has only declared two municipalities as stressed housing areas: A Coruña (from June 2025 to 2028) and Santiago (from July 2026). Arteixo, bordering A Coruña, is left out. The rent cap does not apply there; the owner sets the price they want. The measure does not resolve the pressure, it shifts it to the metropolitan belt.
Reading the drama
One view holds that the couple could move to an inland village, where flats cost €300. True, but it forgets that rural employment is the same problem that pushed them to the city, and that petrol and commuting eat up the savings. Another view points to the failure of the design: protection exists where you can no longer enter and disappears where the excluded go.
Arteixo is Inditex's fiefdom. The paradox needs no emphasis: a hundred metres from the warehouses, two people have made a car their home. The housing law continues to draw maps that do not reflect real life. Or perhaps they do, all too well.
Summary of a discussion on Burbuja.info - Foro de economía, actualidad y política., translated from Spanish and reviewed before publication. Read the full discussion (63 replies).
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