What is ‘rentismo’ in Spain and how is it linked to the housing crisis?

If you read a Spanish news headline currently, there’s a high possibility it will include the term rentismo.

It’s derived from the word rentista, meaning landlord, which can be somewhat of a false friend for English speakers as it sounds like ‘renter’ (in Spanish ‘tenant’ is either inquilino or arrendatario).

However, el rentismo doesn’t encompass all landlords who rent out their properties; instead it refers more specifically to the economic practice of ‘rent-seeking’, which in the simplest of terms means capturing other people’s wealth rather than generating new wealth.

Medical journal Science Direct defines rent-seeking as “the expenditure of scarce resources by firms or individuals to capture monopoly rights, political favours, or economic rents through legal or regulatory manipulation rather than by creating new wealth”.

In the current context in Spain, el rentismo is being used more specifically to speak about the extraction of wealth through rents from residential housing, especially by landlords with many properties or investment firms dubbed vulture funds.

So in that sense there’s a distinction to be made between a casero (a landlord in more general terms) and a rentista, which in English is a ‘rentier’ – a person who lives off income from investments, property, or assets rather than from active work or labour.

Javier Gil, a researcher at the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) and author of the book “Tenant Generation” told Amnesty International in a recent interview that the idea behind el rentismo is that “they’re trying to create a culture where freedom and the good life mean becoming a rentier, that is, living without working.

“But, of course, this isn’t within the reach of most people because rent-seeking is a system that produces nothing, generates no wealth or value. What it does is extract what already exists, what has already been created.”

Some of the slogans chanted during protests following the death of Maricarmen – now the symbol of Spain’s housing crisis – were “el rentismo mata” (rent-seeking kills), and “ser rentista no es una profesión” (being a rentier isn’t a career).

When asked what impact treating housing as a business has had on people in Spain, Gil told Amnesty International that “it’s not a model that achieves wellbeing for the majority of society. Rent-seeking generates inequality,” citing the “precariousness, impoverishment, and instability” that he endures as a relatively-well paid renter with a family in Madrid.

According to Spain’s Ministry of Consumer Affairs and Social Rights, nearly 61 percent of the Spanish rental market is in the hands of multi-property landlords, both private and legal entities, while small landlords with a single property account for 39 percent.

Spaniards are being increasingly priced out of their neighbourhoods by investors and property owners who either unabashedly ride the wave of high rents, or opt to turn residential housing into more remunerative and unregulated holiday lets.

READ ALSO: ‘Spain is outpricing itself’ – Your views on the ‘impossible’ rental market

As housing stock dwindles and demand continues to increase – led by Spain’s rapid population growth in recent years – Spanish authorities have done little to fast-track construction of new affordable housing. 

Some argue that the bureaucratic hurdles that appear to stall such projects are put there intentionally to further cement the status quo of high competition for little supply. In other words, politicians on both sides of the spectrum are defending the interests of these powerful property owners, and in some cases their own.

In fact, Spain’s ruling Socialists are now dealing with a new crisis in the run up to the snap election after it emerged that spokesperson Montse Mínguez is married to someone with 30 flats, all this while the party is actively rallying against rentistas in parliament and in its election campaigning.

Given its growing impact on Spanish society, it may not be too long before el rentismo makes it into pages of the Spanish Royal Academy’s official dictionary.