How large is Spain's public housing stock? Tracing the official figures and the EU averages they are compared with (2019–2026)

Official texts give Spain's public or social housing stock as 290,000 or 318,000 dwellings, and as 1%, 1.1%, 1.5%, 1.6%, 1.7%, less than 2%, 2.5%, 2.5–3.4%, 3.3% or 3.5%. They set it against an EU average of 6–7%, about 7%, 8% or 9%. We collected 32 figures for Spain and 14 EU averages from 25 documents: Spanish law, state housing plans, the Ministry's statistical bulletins, the State housing entity CASA 47, INE, Eurostat, the OECD, Housing Europe, the Banco de España, the Commission and the Council. We checked all 46 quotations literally against the downloaded sources and traced each figure as far back as the documents allow.

The counts come from two Ministry surveys. Every count of Spain's public stock comes from the Ministry's Observatorio de Vivienda y Suelo, which surveyed the dwellings that regions and municipalities own and let:

• 290,000: the 2019 survey. The 2023 housing law, the OECD and the Banco de España reuse it.
• 318,000: the 2023 survey, in a bulletin dated January 2025. The 2026–2030 State Housing Plan, Housing Europe and the Commission reuse it.

Most shares follow from the denominator, the year or the concept.

• Denominator. 318,000 is 1.7% of households and 1.2% of all dwellings.
• Concept: 2.5%, 3.3%, 3.4% and 3.5%. These are not counts of the public stock. Each equals a year of INE's living-conditions survey: the share of households that pay a rent below the market price, whoever the landlord (2.5% in every year 2012–2016; 3.3% in 2023; 3.4% in 2024; 3.5% in 2025). The Ministry's 2024 bulletin says it uses this survey for Spain. The Commission (2026) and Housing Europe (2025) describe the same values as protected housing.

The EU averages.

• 9%: the Ministry's 2020 bulletin gives the EU-28, including the United Kingdom, as «en el entorno del 9%» (9.3%).
• 8.0%: its 2024 bulletin gives the EU-27.
• 7% and 8%: the OECD's unweighted means over the 31 countries it plots and over the 19 EU members among them. Both reproduce exactly. Weighted by dwellings, those EU members give 6.8%.

What does not reconcile.

• The Plan's 9%. The 2026–2030 Plan compares Spain's 3.5% with «la media de la Unión Europea del 9 %» and gives no source for the 9%. The 9% figures we could trace are the 2020 EU-28 average and Eurostat's 2018–2019 share of persons renting at a reduced price or free.
• The 2025 EU texts. The Commission's 2025 country report writes «According to the Bank of Spain( 4 ), Spain’s social rental housing stock represents just 1.5% the total stock, compared to the EU average of 9%», citing a Banco de España paper in footnote 4. The Council's recommendation of July 2025 repeats the claim, attributed to «the Bank of Spain» without a reference. The paper gives the stock as «en torno al 1,5 % de las viviendas principales y el 1 % del stock total de viviendas». It puts the European and OECD average «en torno al 7 %».

Arithmetic and method in the Ministry's 2024 bulletin.

• Regional rental stock. The printed total (187,252) leaves out Asturias and Ceuta; the regions' rows sum to 196,842. The bulletin's «aumento del 5%» from 178,493 in 2019 matches its printed total. The full sum is 10.3% higher, but 34,920 of those dwellings are in a public-private column that the 2019 table does not have. The public-ownership column alone is 9.3% lower.
• Ceuta and Melilla appear in both the regional table and the municipal sample. If counted twice, they add about 3,800 dwellings (1.2% of 318,000).
• The municipal half of the count is extrapolated by population. 181 municipalities have figures (61,207 dwellings); 119 of those figures are carried over from the 2019 survey.

The State's own stock. Article 32 of the housing law (in force since 26 May 2023) requires the State to inventory the public housing it and its agencies own. It also requires an annual report in the Ministry's electronic office. The Constitutional Court (STC 190/2025) reads the article as concerning «el parque público de vivienda de titularidad estatal».

We found no such report or inventory by any route open to us:

• the electronic office the law names (mivau.sede.gob.es: site map and search);
• CASA 47, the State housing entity;
• 1,054 issues of the Boletín Oficial del Estado (BOE), the official gazette;
• the national open-data catalogue;
• the Ministry's 234 catalogued housing publications;
• the Transparency Portal;
• the press.

No national total includes the State's own stock. Only partial figures exist:

• 47,000 dwellings «disponibles o en desarrollo» (Banco de España, July 2023 data);
• 40,000 dwellings identified for transfer from Sareb (2025);
• 816 dwellings offered for rent by CASA 47 (September 2026).

The Ministry's main website blocks our client, so a report published only there cannot be excluded.

The reconciliation. We list 17 differences between figures. 7 are explained, 6 partly explained, 2 are errors in a source and 2 are not explained.

Novelty is narrow. The OECD, the Commission and several newspapers already note that definitions differ. A 2018 fact check rated a minister's 2.5% «Verdadero». What we add is:

• the quoted, dated trail of each figure;
• a reconciliation in which each "explained" is checked by recomputation;
• the errors and mismatches found in the sources;
• the record of the art. 32 search.