Spain's housing crisis and the 'Alice in Wonderland' thinking

The 'Alice in Wonderland' thinking, which confuses desire with reality, has infiltrated the housing debate, leading to policies that, instead of solving the problem, make it worse by ignoring economic laws.

## The illusion of affordable housing

The 'Alice in Wonderland' thinking, coined by Professor **Gustavo Bueno**, describes a way of thinking that imagines a world different from the real one, a world upside down, as if one were in Wonderland. It does not distinguish between desire and reality, between acts and consequences. In politics, it manifests itself in the enunciation of grand objectives, such as world peace or the dissolution of borders, without considering the real difficulties in achieving them. It is a childish, simple and frivolous attitude that appeals to an audience receptive to messages more typical of fairy tales. There is a component of magical thinking: the belief that, if one talks enough about the need for cheap and decent housing, one can conjure away the economic reality that prevents it. The reality, however, is that construction cranes have become scarce in our cities. Private developers can no longer make the numbers work. The countless bureaucratic hurdles, the vertiginous increase in costs and the delay in obtaining profits have turned construction into a barely profitable business.

In the statement that "we all have the right to decent housing", the second part of the equation is deliberately forgotten: that right does not imply the altruistic obligation of another citizen to provide it. This is what peine to the first owner of a home in Madrid, who benefited from an old rent lease contract. That contract, with its successive extensions, expired for the subrogated tenant in **2004**, but the owner kept it in force for fourteen more years, at a symbolic price. Finally, tired of maintenance costs exceeding rental income, he had no choice but to sell it for a figure far below market value, renouncing any profit.

## The absence of gratitude and the reality of the market

Despite the continuous demonstrations of the tenant in question, not a word of thanks has ever been heard for the owner who, without any legal obligation, kept her in the flat for more than a decade at a ridiculous price. It would have been an elegant gesture to remember that, during those fourteen years, she was never disturbed in her enjoyment of the home. Nor did she offer to renew the contract on fairer terms for the property. The tenant, a retired civil servant, seems to believe that the world owes her the possibility of living in a privileged area of Madrid almost for free. The abrupt encounter with reality has left her unable to understand that, with a minimum of interest on her part, that eviction could have been avoided.

The 'Alice in Wonderland' thinking has taken over much of the argument on housing by the far left. There is talk of expropriation, as peine in a television appearance. However, when the threatened owner asks to be expropriated because he can no longer take it, the proposal quickly vanishes, since the government does not want to or cannot spend money on expropriations. These are empty threats, adolescent speeches and interventionist measures that generate the opposite effect to the one sought. No one can force someone to rent a house if they do not wish to, and the threat of extraordinary tax charges on empty homes is not a solution, since, as the first owner demonstrated, one can always sell.

## The patriotic criterion and the withdrawal of supply

The more 'Alice in Wonderland' thinking there is, the more one seeks to ensure the unlimited permanence of the tenant in a property, the more supply withdraws. Owners, antiestéticarful of being tied to problematic tenants, withdraw their homes from the market. As a result, hundreds of thousands of flats have silently disappeared, and those that remain demand from candidates requirements that years ago would be considered inhumane.

A few days ago, a family business put a flat up for rent in **Barcelona**. It was an opportunity: **92** square metres in a stressed area, in perfect condition, in a rehabilitated modernist building. In the first ten minutes of publication, **250** firm applications were received, many of them accompanied by the applicants' financial history. The owners decided to apply a patriotic criterion for selection: it would be awarded, if possible, to a Spanish couple, rather than to digital nomads with larger economies. Let us hope that this idealism works out well for them and they do not have to regret the absence of a Californian programmer or a Norwegian designer, because, just like the first owner of Maricarmen's flat, no one will thank them for this quixotic start.

That part, the real cost of housing for everyone, the adult part, is not accounted for in 'Alice in Wonderland' thinking. As Professor Bueno explains, Alice does not want to be aware of the difficulties in reaching that imaginary and impossible world. Everything is much simpler: one just needs the will to move to that upside-down world.

We have spent years listening to tales and hoaxes from a president who lies and from partners who aim for an impossible opposition. But reality is stubborn. The market only responds to demagogic management, no matter how much it is repeated that the magical results should be different. Welcome everyone to reality.