Two evictions every day for not paying the rent

PalmaA couple with two children, one of whom has a disability, had to face this week a situation for which no one is prepared: being evicted from their home. The eviction, scheduled in Palma, was suspended. It had already been postponed in July, when activists gathered in front of the building, and now the court has once again halted the eviction. According to Stop Evictions Mallorca, the new state regulation approved by Pedro Sánchez's government this week, which Vox, the PP, and Junts overturned in a debate in Congress that will go down in political history, was one of the legal arguments taken into account.

It is not the only one. In the four days that the so-called Maricarmen decree has been in force, at least four evictions scheduled in Inca and Palma have been postponed. In Son Gotleu, a mother and her two children have also gained time. And in Inca, another family remains in a home that, after a long real estate conflict, ended up in the hands of Sareb. These are just four judicial files, but they summarize a problem that has long ceased to be exceptional. Eviction linked to rent has become a daily drama in the Balearic Islands, which have the dubious honor of being at the forefront of all the state's communities in the number of expulsions of citizens from their homes for being unable to meet rent payments.

In 2025, the courts carried out 731 evictions derived from procedures under the Urban Leasing Act (LAU). More than two every day. And they already account for 85.9% of all evictions in the Islands: almost nine out of every ten. These records are, along with Catalonia, the highest per 100,000 inhabitants.

The magnitude explains in part why housing is once again boiling over in the streets. This past week, hundreds of people took to the streets in Palma and some of the protesters ended up pitching tents in the Plaza de España.

It is not just the response to the case of Maricarmen Abascal, the 87-year-old woman evicted in Madrid who has turned the housing crisis into a top-priority political issue in recent weeks. In the Islands, the unrest goes back further. Rental prices, the difficulty of renewing contracts, evictions, and the feeling that an increasingly large part of the population is being excluded from property ownership have been building up pressure.

A problem that does not stop growing

In 2013, the first year with comparable data from the General Council of the Judiciary, 64.6% of evictions in the Balearic Islands were linked to rent. Mortgage foreclosures accounted for 33.7%. Twelve years later, procedures related to non-payment of rent are 85.9% and mortgage-related ones have fallen to 10.5%.

The financial crisis left the image of families losing their homes because they could not pay their mortgage. Now the picture is different: the Balearic eviction is, increasingly, a rental eviction. And the Islands also stand out when the data is adjusted for population. During the first quarter of 2025, 20.2 rental-related evictions were recorded for every 100,000 inhabitants, the highest rate in the State, ahead of Catalonia, with 19.2, and the Canary Islands, with 16.6.

The trend leaves little room for doubt: the center of gravity of the crisis has shifted from the mortgage to the rent.

25,000 families awaiting the Congress

Nearly 25,000 families in the Balearic Islands have contracts that end in the coming months and are particularly exposed to the rising costs of the market. The Ministry of Social Rights, Consumer Affairs and Agenda 2030 estimates that moving from a contract that is ending to a new one at current prices could represent an additional 4,615 euros per year for tenants on the Islands: about 385 euros per month. This is the highest estimated jump of all the autonomous communities. The national average is an increase of 1,735 euros per year, about 145 euros each month.

The increase calculated by the State for cases on the islands justifies the special concern that exists in the Balearic Islands regarding housing, and how the controversial processing of the two state decree-laws and their subsequent repeal has been followed.

Official data explain where this distance comes from. The State Reference System already placed the average price of current contracts in the Balearic Islands in 2024 above nine euros per month per square meter. And the Islands' Housing Observatory, based on the deposits held at the Ibavi, confirms a “practical doubling” of average rental values between 2020 and 2025. No municipality now presents an average lower than that of five years ago.

According to Fotocasa, a typical 80-square-meter home went from about 931 euros per month to more than 1,500 in five years: nearly 600 euros more each month.

In this scenario, any measure that allows extending certain contracts that expire before 2028 by up to two years is seen as the only hope, due to the absolute lack of housing at affordable prices.

The reality is that, while some charge more and more for apartments, others are left out of any possibility of acquiring one. Data from the General Directorate of Cadastre analyzed a few weeks ago by ARA Balears show that owners of a single urban asset have been steadily losing weight.

In 2007, they represented 64.78% of owners. In 2026, they are 54.61%. At the same time, multi-property owners are growing. Holders of two assets have gone from 18.58% to 20.85%; those with three, from 7.73% to 10.21%; those with four, from 3.56% to 5.29%; and those with five, from 1.83% to 2.85%. Among those who accumulate from six to ten assets, the increase is even more striking: from 2.51% to 4.64%, almost double.

For UIB geographer Sònia Vives, this change goes to the heart of the problem. “The general trend is that we are moving from ownership to multi-ownership,” she explained to ARA Balears. Ownership, she says, functions more and more as an economic border. Those who already have assets can obtain income from them and have more capital to continue accumulating them. Those who have to allocate a very high part of their salary to rent see how the possibility of saving enough to buy moves a little further away each month. “This means that there are more people who are becoming poorer and more people who are becoming wealthier,” warns Vives.

Living off housing

His criticism goes beyond whether there are many or few flats available. It has to do with the role that housing has acquired within the economy in tourist areas like the Balearic Islands. For years, Vives has been posing a very simple question: “Do we think of housing as a place to live or as a way to obtain income from it?”

Owning a flat and renting it out to supplement a pension or a salary is an approach that currently sounds like the past, and which today exceeds the average salaries of most of the island's population. When housing becomes a modus vivendi, and therefore the goal is no longer to supplement an income but to live off real estate rents, the conflict is served.

“Because that income doesn't come from nothing. It comes, in large part, from the salary of the person occupying the apartment,” recalls Sònia Vives. And here lies the contradiction that the UIB geographer puts on the table: in a territory where rents have grown much more than the purchasing power of a portion of the residents, so that some can live more and more off their income, others have to dedicate more and more income to being able to live.

In Ibiza, the researcher had already summarized it with an especially graphic expression: “Impoverishment to live.”

As much as there is a great deal of social criticism against the large investment funds that have been entering housing ownership, in the Balearic Islands they still represent a small segment. Although there is no specific data providing the number of properties held by these corporations that are currently engaged in speculation, the Association of Real Estate Agents and other organizations insist that the bulk of the Balearic rental market is in the hands of owners of one or two homes.

For the real estate sector, as advisor and expert Pedro García explains, if there is no more supply, “caution must be exercised regarding legislative measures.” For this reason, he calls for “combined and constant policies, not the result of a political moment. More public housing construction, which remains at a minimum,” he states. For Vives, on the other hand, limiting the diagnosis to the lack of supply leaves out an essential part of the problem: the unequal distribution of property and the growing weight that real estate income has in a society where more and more people have to live in rented housing.

For the moment, with the decree-laws repealed, the eviction statistics and, behind them, the drama for the people who experience it, will continue to increase.