Franco handed out 8,000 flats and today no one can buy one

The historical memory of housing has an uncomfortable chapter, and the NODO video exposes it. It wasn't 8,000 flats, as the headline says, nor 18,000, as was said in the square: the title deed handover event totalled 7,486 homes. But the number matters less than the uncomfortable question: how is it possible that a regime condemned for misery handed out keys while today, with democracy and Europeanism, rent eats up half a salary?

The fine print of the Francoist miracle

The regime made housing a flagship. The maxim of José Luis de Arrese, Minister of Housing, sums up the strategy: "We don't want a country of proletarians, but a country of property owners." The goal was to create a conservative middle class anchored to its brick. And it partly worked: family anecdotes from the time speak of flats that cost the same as a Seat 124, about 130,000 pesetas, payable over five years.

Facing that official image, the other side: the shanty towns of Carabanchel and Vallecas did not disappear until well into democracy. There were unpaved neighbourhoods at least until development reached them. The complex that Franco was handing over in the video was not the solution to the housing shortage, but a piece of propaganda in a country with a structural deficit of substandard housing. The failure of the public housing model in blocks, exemplified by Pruitt-Igoe in the United States, served as a warning.

From key handovers to 1,200-euro rents

Public discussion jumps to the present with an irony that hurts: many of those Francoist flats, built with fair quality, are rented today for 1,200 euros a month. Or for sale at 300,000 euros, a down payment unattainable for the average salary.

Here the analysis splits. One current holds that the problem is speculation: vulture funds and holiday rental companies hoard housing, and the state looks the other way while large foreign buyers use property as a capital refuge. They cite the real estate SICAVs that Rajoy pardoned, and propose a pogre tax on housing ownership. The opposite responds with data: empty housing in provincial capitals has fallen 32% since 2001 while the national stock grew 24%, and the problem is not hoarding but the shortage of new construction and regulation that scares off small landlords. Rental investment, they insist, is the only way for many without savings.

With these ingredients, the million-dollar question remains open: if Francoism handed out keys to create comfortable property owners, and today housing policy turns a roof into a luxury, which model do we prefer? The answer is not in the NODO video, but the video serves to remind us that once, whether done well or badly, public housing was at least a problem that was tackled. Now not even that.