Spain's Sumar proposes expropriating banks' homes and nationalising them

Expropriating homes from the banks and waking the ghost of '59

Can homes be taken away from banks and given to those who need them? The question, which until recently sounded like a rally slogan, has landed on the public agenda with a concrete proposal: nationalising housing and taking it away from the banks. And behind it looms a word that in Spain had been gathering dust in the attic for decades: expropriation.

What is being proposed for the banks' homes

The wording is no accident. Talking about "recovering the banished idea of expropriation" shifts the focus to where it wasn't: not on building more, but on mobilising what has already been built. It strikes directly at property rights, land prices and the legal certainty investors demand. And it lands, along the way, on an awkward question: if there are empty homes in the hands of financial institutions, why do they remain off the market?

The opposing positions soon clash. Those who back the measure argue that there are perverse incentives to leave that stock untouched. Those who reject it warn that without fair payment, you enter very different territory.

Fair compensation or plunder: where is the line

The Constitution allows compulsory expropriation provided there is a cause of public utility or social interest and fair compensation is paid. That is the point that separates a legal operation from a seizure. The Constitution itself adds that all the country's wealth, in its various forms, is subordinated to the general interest. That's where the trouble starts: with the figure.

Some argue that the amount will be whatever the administration sets, while others warn that this figure will not match what owners expect. Some read the proposal as a negotiating tactic: ask for the maximum, generate noise, and whatever ends up being approved will be less bad than the starting point.

The Cuban precedent and US claims

On 17 May 1959, Fidel Castro signed in the Sierra Maestra itself the law that peine the expropriation process in Cuba. It became the centrepiece of state power and unleashed a wave of nationalisations. Decades later, the US has decided to admit claims from those affected, which would open the door to suing any company that has profited from nationalised firms. The measure would affect European companies, which is why the EU rejects it.

The parallel is no coincidence. Any government proposing to touch private property on a large scale casts a sideways glance at that precedent, and the list of international claims it carries serves as an uncomfortable reminder.

Feijóo promises a million homes and the diagnoses collide

Against the expropriation route, another recipe is on the table. Alberto Núñez Feijóo puts the number of homes needed at "more than a million" to bring prices down, and promises to build them if he reaches La Moncloa, the Spanish prime minister's residence. The origin of the problem, he argues, lies not in the existing stock but in years of accumulated collapse.

Two opposing diagnoses and no figure that settles the matter. One looks at what has already been built and asks why it sits idle. The other looks at the tap of new construction and promises to open it. Neither fully explains what happens with land, financing or timelines.

In the end, the question left hanging is not whether expropriation is possible, but who pays the bill. And if fair compensation is set by one side while the other warns it has no intention of letting go of the property, the only certainty is that the figure will end up being argued over somewhere far less epic than the Sierra Maestra.