Compiled with the help of artificial intelligence, based on Spanish-language information. Source below the article.
Canary Islands at the bottom of Spain’s social housing table
The Canary Islands find themselves at the bottom of the ranking of Spanish autonomous communities for the number of protected (social) homes completed since 2019 — the year in which the islands began a new parliamentary term in July, under a progressive government supported by PSOE, NC, Sí Podemos and ASG. That period ended with the regional elections of May 2023, after which the regional government passed under the control of CC and PP, with the nationalist Fernando Clavijo as president.
Whichever administration has been in charge — albeit with the limiting factor of Covid during the previous term — the official figures now known for the archipelago (previously reported by eldiario.es), which are those published by Spain’s Ministry of Housing and Urban Agenda (1990 to June 2026), certainly do not amount to a pass mark: they fall far below that.
Almost four years without a single protected home
To begin with, the Canary Islands have gone almost four years in a row, since 2023, without completing a single protected flat, while during the previous term, with the socialist Ángel Víctor Torres as regional president, only 268 units were finalised — 60 of them within 2019 (part of that year fell under a government led by Fernando Clavijo) and 208 in 2022. Look wherever you like, there is nothing more to be found in the statistics supplied by the ministry.
The resulting average for that period of seven years and six months, from January 2019 to June 2026, is therefore disheartening: it works out at an average of just 36 completed protected homes per year. The Canary Islands have a registered population of more than two million people, around 2.2 million; the islands received 18.4 million tourists in 2025; there is an enormous supply of homes operated as holiday rentals, and pressure from second homes is also extremely strong, particularly from foreign demand (the tourist visitor figure has already been cited).
Refusal to activate rent-limiting system
Despite requests from a very small number of town halls, among them Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, the regional government has so far refused to activate the national system established by law to curb speculative rises in rental prices in areas classified as stressed housing markets. On top of the tremendous shortfall in public-sector supply in the Canary Islands, there is another almost equally negative record: the pace of construction has not fared much better for private, open-market housing.
This sector has not managed in the Canary Islands, as is also the case in the rest of Spain, to recover a reasonable rate of building after the powerful property crash of 2008. Indeed, that is so. In the first half of 2026, only 1,574 private, open-market homes were completed in the islands, compared with 3,152 residences in 2025.
Far below the boom years
By way of contrast to these figures, there are the largest records of the 1990-2026 period: more than 29,600 in 2008, the year of the crash, and almost 28,200 in 2002. Since 2012, an average supply equal to or above 5,000 private flats per year — the 1994 figure — has not been recovered.
It is clear that the Canary Islands are not a major regional power in social housing construction, either in absolute terms or relative to the overall supply of primary residences, but it is true that the absolute indicators for the 2019-2026 period bear little resemblance to those of 1997 and 1998, the two years of the broader analysis period, from 1990 to June 2026, in which the most public housing was completed, with levels above 4,000 units in both cases.
In 2022, when more protected housing was completed than in the previous almost eight years, only 208 protected flats were reached. Everything else within the 2019-2026 stage is pure desert, were it not for that 2022 figure and the 60 homes in 2019. The rest represents the most absolute drought.
Spain-wide shortfall and international comparisons
Since 2023, 47,000 protected public flats have been delivered across Spain. The figure promised by Pedro Sánchez’s government was 184,000. Clearly it has fallen a long way short, but under Mariano Rajoy’s Spanish government things were even worse in his second term, with only 18,000 homes delivered. A Bank of Spain study puts the country’s public housing deficit at 750,000 units, a shortfall that grows by a further 250,000 every year that passes without adequate solutions.
As examples that contrast with Spain, it is worth citing how things are done in Vienna, where 60% of housing is public. It is also worth knowing that in Spain only 1.5% of the housing stock is publicly owned, a level far below the OECD average of 7.1%, and a long way from the 16.4% of the United Kingdom and 14% of France. Spain comes close to Germany’s relative level of 2.6%, and is above Portugal, at 1.1%.
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