Catalan Rents Rose 55.7% Since 2013 While Median Pay Grew 30.7%
Rents in Catalonia grew far faster than median pay from 2013 to 2024, Ara found, hitting renters and low earners hardest before the Nov. 11 strike.
Average rents in Catalonia rose 55.7% between 2013 and 2024, almost double the 30.7% growth in the median salary, according to a comparison by the Catalan newspaper Ara. Buying a home rose even faster, and food prices also outpaced pay, which leaves tenants and lower-income households with less money after the basics.
Housing and food are also the main grievances behind the general strike called for Nov. 11. The Generalitat (Catalan government) reached a similar conclusion in its Social Report 2025, which names those two costs as the main pressure on household budgets.
The figures behind the squeeze
- 55.7%: growth in average rent from 2013 to 2024 according to the Generalitat. Figures from the property portal Idealista put the rise for tenants at 73%.
- 78.7%: the increase in purchase prices over the same period. Ara reports that prices jumped by another 20 points the following year, so the price per square meter in 2025 was close to double the 2013 level.
- 43.1%: how much more it cost to fill the fridge between 2013 and 2024. Measured by the CPI (the consumer price index), food and non-alcoholic drinks rose 9.9% from 2013 to 2019 and 33% from 2020 to 2025.
- 23.4%: overall CPI inflation from 2013 to 2024, below the growth in median pay. Costs that weigh more on wealthier households grew slowly: health 12.8%, education 14.1%, while communication and information became 8.80% cheaper.
- 7,200 euros: the average yearly cost of renting in Spain in 2025, compared with 1,947 euros for owners still paying a mortgage, according to a Fedea study. Fedea counts only mortgage interest, following Eurostat (the EU’s statistics office) guidelines.
- 25%: the share of renting families in Catalonia that spend more than 40% of their income on housing, against 3.2% of families paying a mortgage.
What it means for renters and low earners
The official inflation rate hides how differently people are hit. Josep Oliver, professor emeritus of applied economics at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB), told Ara that the CPI “does not take into account the wealth of households.” Lower-income families spend a bigger share of their budget on housing, energy and food, the items that rose most, and the Generalitat report says they cope by cutting other spending or saving less.
Oliver also said that, for the first time, the children of the middle class are losing purchasing power, a problem that until now stayed mostly with the poorest groups.
Fewer owners, many more tenants
Home ownership is falling. According to Idescat (Catalonia’s statistics institute), 75.3% of families lived in a home they owned in 2013, compared with 67.2% in 2024. Catalonia gained 186,900 households in that period, but about 89,000 fewer own their home and about 300,000 more rent. Ara attributes the shift to demographic change and the arrival of immigrants, who tend to have low or middle incomes.
Mariona Segú, a professor at Université de Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, said “going from tenant to owner is becoming more complicated,” because higher rents make it harder to save for a down payment. The Bank of Spain found that in 2021, three out of four tenant families had serious difficulty buying a property in their municipality.
How wages caught up after 2019
Pay barely moved in the years after the 2008 crisis. The median Catalan salary rose 7.4% from 2013 to 2019, partly because of wage restraint promoted by Brussels, then 21% in the five years after that.
The national minimum wage, known as the SMI (salario mínimo interprofesional), went from 736 euros to 900 euros in 2019 and is now 1,221 euros. A further 5.3% rise is planned for next year but has not yet been approved. For the lowest-paid 10% of workers, pay has grown 53.3% since 2015, while for the lowest-paid 25% it rose 30%.
Talks between unions and employers on a sixth national agreement on employment and collective bargaining (AENC) have broken down. Camil Ros, general secretary of UGT in Catalonia, told Ara that employers are refusing to move.
Source: Ara
