Landlords in Lleida have had their own association since this week. Som Habitatge, the property owners’ union founded in May 2025 as a counterweight to tenants’ unions, presented its office in the capital of the Segrià at the Parador on Tuesday, based in Plaça Sant Joan, according to La Mañana. Its delegate, Lucía Aguirre, said property owners feel «desprotegidos» (unprotected) by a state that, in her words, is emptying the right to private property of its content, according to SEGRE.

Aguirre explained that more than half of the members are small landlords with between one and five flats, according to La Mañana. Among their concerns, she put squatting first and insisted on the need to regain effective control over their homes, according to SEGRE.

Landlords’ savings

The delegate complained that public debate is criminalising property owners. Nobody gave them anything; these are their savings and their investments, she said, according to La Mañana. She asked for the debate to take both sides of the contract into account, arguing that landlords and tenants alike must have rights and obligations.

Aguirre said the association is aware of how hard some sections of the population are struggling, but criticised regulation «a golpe de decreto» (by decree) and the fact that landlords are made to bear the social cost of vulnerability, according to SEGRE. She said the state should build public housing and noted that it collected 52,000 million euros in taxes from the property sector in the last financial year.

She also lamented that a narrative is being sold socially that only fosters hatred between landlords and tenants and does not reflect reality. To tackle the lack of supply, she called for a look at the register of empty homes and for landlords’ concerns to be heard. She argued that automatic renewal of leases would only reduce supply and rejected calling investment funds «buitres» (vultures), because they are needed to build, according to the same newspaper.

The decrees under scrutiny

The association’s secretary, Eduard Soler, explained at the event the changes in the new housing decrees. In his view, they introduce tax changes that, although they might seem beneficial for small landlords, cause a great deal of confusion and different interpretations of how they apply, according to SEGRE.

The association plans to hold training sessions and seminars so that landlords understand the new legislation, to offer legal advice and to act as a mediator between landlords and tenants in disputes such as squatting or damage to properties, according to La Mañana.

The Paeria: «Sois imprescindibles»

The Paeria’s deputy mayor for the Urban Agenda, Begoña Iglesias, spoke at the event and defended public-private cooperation. «Los propietarios sois imprescindibles» (you landlords are essential), she told them, according to SEGRE. Iglesias added that the most vulnerable must be looked after, but that it makes no sense not to listen to landlords in order to have a cross-cutting view of the housing crisis.

Squatting in Lleida

The province of Lleida recorded 144 complaints of property occupation in the first ten months of 2025, compared with 189 in the whole of 2024, according to figures provided by the Catalan interior minister, Núria Parlon, in reply to a parliamentary question from the Comuns, as reported by SEGRE. In the city of Lleida, 61 occupations of residential properties were reported up to October 2025, compared with 88 in 2024.

In the province there were also eleven complaints of breaking into a dwelling in primary residences and six in second homes, according to the same reply. Across Catalonia, the Interior department recorded 11,172 complaints of property occupation between 2024 and October 2025.

The Mossos took part in 45 court-ordered evictions from homes in the Lleida districts in 2025, compared with 65 in 2024, according to SEGRE. In the city there were a dozen, down from 26 the year before. Across Catalonia, the Mossos took part in 2,526 evictions in 2025, led by Barcelona with 317, followed by Badalona with 163 and Girona with 142. These are court evictions, criminal and civil, from residential properties in which the court requested the help of the Catalan police; they do not include those in which police intervention was not requested or turned out not to be necessary. The Interior department has only had these figures since 1 February 2024. Badalona was the Catalan municipality with most occupation complaints in 2025, with 791, according to the same newspaper.

Usurpation or breaking into a dwelling

The Interior department distinguishes two offences in the phenomenon of occupation, according to the same report. Usurpation is the occupation without the owner’s consent of a property that is not a habitual residence, such as empty buildings, premises or land; if peaceful, it is punished with a fine of three to six months. Breaking into a dwelling is entering or remaining in an inhabited space, whether a first or second home, without the consent of the person living there; without violence, it carries a prison sentence of six months to two years.

55,000 homes not in regular use

The Spanish Tax Agency has counted slightly more than 55,000 habitable homes in the Lleida area whose use is «a disposición de su titular» (at the owner’s disposal), almost a third of the Ponent housing stock, according to SEGRE. The figure, from the second Statistics on Homes Declared in Income Tax, includes without distinction second homes, homes let without a contract and squatted homes.

According to those figures, the stock of homes not in regular use is 76% larger than the almost 32,000 homes rented out as main residences in the area. In the city the ratio is reversed: there are 7,549 homes not in regular use and 11,989 rented ones, according to the same newspaper. The Lleida housing stock totals 182,381 homes with a cadastral value on which property tax is paid. The INE’s 2021 Population and Housing Census counted 40,500 empty homes in the area and 5,330 in the city, according to the same newspaper.

The association

Som Habitatge was launched in May 2025 at the Ateneu Barcelonès before representatives of the PSC, Junts, Vox and the PP, according to El Debate. Its president, Núria Garrido, said then that «en Cataluña invertir en vivienda se ha convertido en una temeridad» (investing in housing in Catalonia has become reckless) and criticised the persecution, distrust and legal uncertainty landlords face. Garrido argued that Catalonia has become a «laboratorio» (laboratory) of bad housing ideas, from stressed rental areas to lowering the threshold for large property holders to five homes.

The association was founded with about 250 members and a fee of 10 euros for owners of one to five flats, according to Ara. Garrido stressed the legal uncertainty surrounding evictions and the moratoriums. She complained that an owner with a squatted flat cannot recover it because of those moratoriums year after year, while still paying the utilities. She argued that being able to evict does not mean putting vulnerable people on the street, but that the authorities must fulfil their obligation to guarantee the right to housing, according to the same report. She also criticised penalties for landlords over discrepancies with the rent reference index while tenants who stop paying cannot be evicted, and questioned the 30% reserve of new building for protected housing in Barcelona, the rise to 20% of property transfer tax and the compulsory register of large property holders.

At that launch, the Catalan government’s Housing Secretary, Lídia Guillén, welcomed the creation of the association to give landlords a voice and argued that public-private cooperation is essential, according to Ara.

The legal director of the Barcelona Association of Property Agents, Carles Sala, described at the same event a legislative landscape of «hiperactividad» (hyperactivity) and «inestabilidad absoluta» (absolute instability), with twelve laws in six years. «De estas tres no están convalidadas, cinco son total o parcialmente inconstitucionales y una tiene deficiencias técnicas» (three of them have not been ratified, five are wholly or partly unconstitutional and one has technical flaws), he said, according to El Debate. He added that landlords are not part of the problem but of the solution, because, in his view, they can provide housing in the short and medium term and the administration cannot.

The professor of Civil Law at the Universitat Rovira i Virgili and director of its UNESCO Housing Chair, Sergio Nasarre, defended private property as a «institución milenaria» (thousand-year-old institution), according to the same newspaper.

What is not on record

None of the sources cited states how many members Som Habitatge has in Lleida or how many flats they own. There are no published official figures on squatting in Lleida for 2026.

Sources and verification

Information based on SEGRE, 14 October 2026; La Mañana, 14 October 2026; SEGRE, 29 January 2026, with data from the Catalan Interior department; SEGRE, 9 October 2026, with Tax Agency data; El Debate, 22 May 2025; and Ara, 22 May 2025. The statements by Garrido and Guillén reported by Ara come from its English edition and are paraphrased. The 2025 squatting figures only run until October.