‘Landlords don’t want foreigners’: How racism is rife in Spain’s rental market

Finding a place to rent in Spain is becoming increasingly difficult due to a lack of stock, high prices and stiff competition.

But for some ‘candidates’, their surname, accent or country of origin can make the search even harder.

Those are the conclusions of a report titled “Is it for rent? : Racism and segregation in housing rentals”, presented by the Provivienda Association and funded by Spain’s Ministry of Migration.

Provivienda pretended to be a homeowner looking to rent out their property when calling 100 realtors in Madrid and Barcelona.

When they demanded that they only accept visits from Spanish nationals, 99 percent of agencies accepted these racist conditions. When the association carried out the same test in 2020, 72.5 percent of agencies agreed not to show the properties to certain foreigners.

Provivienda’s findings were also based on 600 calls they made to the agencies, using Spanish and foreign callers to test whether the agents were applying the xenophobic requirements.

“If you’re looking for a Spanish tenant, that’s not a problem,” one of the realtors is quoted as saying.

“A lot of people ask us for this, we’re obviously not going to include that in the advert, but yes.

“Obviously, if a South American comes for example, you can’t say ‘We can’t rent to you because the owner doesn’t want Latin Americans’,  but if you don’t want it, we’ll do it of course. That’s how it’s always been.”

But in some cases, estate agents are open about the landlord’s discriminatory demands. “The owner doesn’t want to rent the apartment to foreigners,” Irene Asiedua Danso told Spanish broadcaster RTVE about what she was told when she tried to rent an apartment in Madrid.

Provivienda’s findings also showed that Spaniards were offered twice as many rental options as foreigners and that those made available to foreigners are usually in specific low-income areas, which leads to the creation of ghettos.  

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However, not all foreigners are discriminated against. The study reveals that there are positive “potential tenant” profiles associated with Spanish nationals or foreigners from wealthy nations such as Germany, the Netherlands, the United States and Canada.

But foreigners from countries in Asia, Africa, or Latin America faced negative stereotypes and struggled far more to find a place to find a place to rent, according to the study.

“The current situation in the rental market, characterised by a growing shortage of supply and historic price increases, deepens residential exclusion,” explains Elena Martínez, head of Provivienda’s Research and Evaluation department. 

“Virtually all of the real estate agencies contacted, accepted explicit forms of discrimination. This represents an increase of 30 percentage points compared to 2020”. 

Only 29 percent of foreigners interested in an apartment perceived extreme friendliness on the phone compared to 45 percent of Spaniards who made the calls. 

Spain’s State Secretariat for Migration told newspaper La Vanguardia that “the Government of Spain is currently working to combat inequality and discrimination on a social integration and inclusion plan, which will have housing as one of its fundamental pillars of action”.  

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For Martínez, increasing the supply of affordable public housing is key to fixing the situation.

Racism is nothing new in Spain and unfortunately there have been forms of it going on many years. It has been talked about openly on many occasions with regard to racist incidents in Spanish football, but prejudices goes much deeper than that. 

In September 2024, Spain investigated anonymous letters ordering companies to not hire foreigners.

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Alba García Martín, a member of Spanish NGO SOS Racismo, argues that “Spain has a very lackadaisical and dismissive approach that allows it to distance itself from issues of racism, which have very rarely held any importance in the national agenda”. 

Spain’s National Security Council also warned the government about a rise in xenophobia and racist hate crimes back in 2019 and previously there have been numerous stories about racial discrimination towards prospective tenants and homebuyers too.

In fact, Spain is one of only two Council of Europe countries not to have its own independent national racism watchdog, along with the micro-state of San Marino.