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Article

A Brief History of Social Housing in Spain: Residential Architecture and Housing Policies in the 19th and 20th Centuries

by
David Hernández Falagán
1,* and
Maribel Rosselló Nicolau
2
1
Departament de Teoria i Història de l’Arquitectura i Tècniques de Comunicació, ETSAB, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, 08015 Barcelona, Spain
2
Departament de Teoria i Histporia de l’Arquitectura i Tècniques de Comunicació, ETSAV, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, 08173 Sant Cugat del Vallès, Spain
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Histories 2024, 4(3), 326-345; https://doi.org/10.3390/histories4030016
Submission received: 14 June 2024 / Revised: 31 July 2024 / Accepted: 12 August 2024 / Published: 16 August 2024
(This article belongs to the Section Environmental History)
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Abstract

:
The history of social housing in Spain over the last two centuries has been influenced by factors of political and economic instability that have affected the entire country. This research examines these factors through the analysis of official legislative documentation and other bibliographic sources. This article covers different study periods, defined by significant historical circumstances, during which housing policies responded to the sociopolitical context of each moment. This study pays special attention to the management instruments that were implemented, as well as the nature of residential architectures and urban solutions that emerged as a consequence. The result is a social housing landscape that presents significant shortcomings and deficiencies, prefiguring a situation of vulnerability in the face of the economic crisis of the early 21st century.

1. Introduction

Social housing, workers’ housing, subsidized housing, affordable housing… There are many terms we can find in the abundant specialized literature published in Spain, reflecting a permanent and holistic concern about the issue. As has happened in the surrounding countries—particularly in the European context—the interest in housing issues since the 19th century extends beyond the architectural discipline due to the multidisciplinary nature of its scope. Urban studies, social sciences, economics, law, and even seemingly distant areas—such as medicine—have explored the urban habitat as a context for the staging of domestic relations, neighborhood coexistence, and citizenship. A historical analysis of the evolution of a concept as unstable as social housing should allow for a relational observation of aspects linked to both architectural production and its urban morphology and to the social configuration of residential contexts and the economic, sociological, or geographical implications that public policies have facilitated.
The review proposed in this text not only analyzes the architectural, typological, and technical models of residential configuration generated by each era and context over the past two centuries but also the conditions of production, the participating agents, and the political–economic situations that have given rise to different models of social habitat. In all cases, we are talking about residential proposals promoted by public and/or private entities to address the housing needs of lower-income social classes.
Placing the origin of the discussion should lead us to understand the profound social and urban transformation driven by the gradual industrialization process of the country since the 19th century. The migratory flows to urban areas and the emergence of a working class with great housing needs is the context that successively gives rise to workers’ housing complexes, industrial colonies, housing cooperatives for the production of low-cost homes, company housing blocks, housing estates, etc. The country’s political circumstances, the instability of the turn-of-the-century decades, the Civil War, the Franco dictatorship, the years of political transition, and the first two decades of democratic municipalities configure a heterogeneous chronology in housing policies with a structural impact on the welfare state model, tenure regime, administrative division of competencies, and the legislative model.
The architectural and urban value of Spanish social housing production undoubtedly deserves singular appreciation for its often innovative and experimental character or for the lessons it has provided on other occasions: from the formulations of the growth of Spanish cities to accommodate the new working class—with paradigmatic proposals such as Ildefons Cerdà’s Eixample in Barcelona or Arturo Soria’s Linear City in Madrid—through the hygienist rationalisms of low-cost houses, cooperatives, colonies, “poblados”, the importation of functionalist models during the developmentalism period, and the different forms of urban densification through subsidized housing to contemporary collaborative experiments and tactical scenarios (Hernández Falagán 2021). Social, workers’, subsidized, and affordable housing constitute a fundamental chapter in the history of Spanish architecture, some of whose significant episodes this work proposes to address.
As will be seen below, the observations critically summarized in this article are based on the study of successive legislative figures, each understood within its political–economic context, and on the review of social housing architectures developed in each of those contexts. The principal state-of-the-art references used include works by researchers such as Carlos Sambricio and Fernández Galiano in the case of Madrid, Luis Arias on Casas Baratas, Mercè Tatller on cooperative housing, and Carmen Díaz, Javier Monclús, and Montserrat Solano on housing estates. A set of catalogs and specific investigations on residential architecture have been used to identify illustrative cases of the reflections presented here. The theoretical framework has been the observation of social housing policies and architectures from the transdisciplinary perspective typical of housing studies. In this way, the successive political and economic constraints of the Spanish state, from which manifest ideologies in housing policies and residential models have emerged, have been used as the theoretical context. This article identifies such contexts and offers a critical observation of the evolution of the policies.

2. Materials and Methods

This research was carried out through the study of two main sources of information. On the one hand, legislative figures related to housing were approved throughout the study period. These original documents were reviewed through official publications and state legislative repositories. This review allowed for the identification of four main regulatory themes: urban regulation, urban leases, affordable or subsidized housing, and homeownership. Table 1 provides a list of the original documents consulted.
On the other hand, a selected set of bibliographic sources compiling historical architectural production in Spain during the study period was chosen and consulted. These include catalogs and compendia of architecturally significant projects with proven editorial quality—some exclusively focused on collective housing—that document the most significant architectural production of the time. In this manner, a list of projects was compiled, with their most notable examples cited in the results. Table 2 provides a list of publications used as a framework for locating the case studies.
While this legislative study allows for a suitable historical and contextual analysis of the period, the illustration of the materialization of social housing through architectural projects enables the evaluation of the physical evolution of housing production in domestic and urban terms. The fundamental objective of this study is to construct a reasoned narrative of the evolution of social housing to understand the current state of affairs at the beginning of the 21st century. The results of the observations were synthesized in a simplified manner to achieve a panoramic and analytical view of the concept of social housing in Spain throughout the entire period.

3. Results

In the following, a series of partial study periods have been identified that allow for specific analytical approaches to be established regarding key moments in the evolution of social housing.

3.1. Housing and City in the 19th Century

Often, the circumstances of the city model we know have been situated in relation to the legacy of a historical city upon which the residential forms of modernity emerged. However, it would be more accurate to recognize that it was the development of the industrial city—with the massive influx of population, the emergence of urban infrastructure, and the transformation and evolution of residential types—that triggered the dissolution of the traditional city (Martí Aris 2000). Therefore, it is appropriate to begin this narrative by considering the nineteenth-century city as the urban paradigm in which the new residential needs unfolded, giving rise to different living scenarios required by the transitioning productive, territorial, and social model.
A panoramic portrait of the state of affairs at the beginning of the period should not overlook the previous circumstances of rural housing, which were predominant until well into the 20th century (just before the Civil War, almost half of the homes in Spain were located far from cities, housing the population dedicated to agriculture and presenting certainly deficient and unhealthy living conditions) (Arias González and de Luis Martín 2006). The same can be said of mining barracks. However, the case of urban popular housing is singular, whose origins can be traced to the popularization of rental housing as the heir of traditional workshop-houses. The petite bourgeoisie of industrialists and merchants acquired urban residential property, monopolizing a rental housing market intended for the working classes. This situation led to issues of overcrowding and congestion, which in many cases resulted in typological formulas of maximum density such as “ciudadelas”, “corralas”, or “pasillos” (Tatjer 2005).
In the context of the densely populated nineteenth-century city, the newly arrived population lived in extremely poor and unhealthy conditions—reports, such as Friedrich Engels’ concerning the English working class, document this (Engels 2020). Thus, those closest to the health sector were the ones who denounced the situation. Figures like Pedro Felipe Monlau (Monlau Roca 1847) addressed housing improvements ranging from access to small daily conveniences to the layout of spaces and their requirements to enhance habitability conditions. These concerns were shared by the author of an article published in El Diario Español on 1 July 1853, denouncing the extremely precarious conditions of a building on Calle del Soldado in Madrid (Sambricio 2003).
The Spanish urban planning of this period largely responded to these circumstances with expansive strategies, materialized in the form of urban expansions—contrasting with the very popular interior reform operations in the European context following the transformation of Haussmann’s Paris or Vienna’s Ringstrasse (de Lille 1999). Although Spain would not finalize an Extension Law (“ley de ensanche”) until 1864, Barcelona with its Plan Cerdà and Madrid with its Plan Castro advanced toward this solution due to urgent needs. This was followed by Spanish towns such as Bilbao, San Sebastián, Valencia, and Palma. Unsuitable living conditions were one of the driving forces behind these urban proposals, which aimed to overcome the situation through the demolition of city walls—when they existed—and the creation of extensions. Additionally, housing was a central issue in debates surrounding expansions, which were also considered as residential extensions intended to solve the housing problem for lower classes. In the 1859 Atlas of the Theory of City Construction (Cerdà 1991), Ildefons Cerdà cited legislative initiatives from other countries, including the establishment of the Society for Improving the Condition of the Working Classes in England in 1844, and examples of French workers’ cities. Based on these references, in the Memoria del Anteproyecto del Ensanche de Barcelona (1855) (Cerdà 1858), he proposed various properties categorized as second-rate houses for the working class, organized around a block with a central courtyard (Figure 1).
The proposal for extensions anticipated the emergence of alternative urban initiatives akin to the garden city or affordable housing colonies. Arturo Soria’s distinctive proposal for the linear city to encircle large cities by connecting existing urban centers arose from similar congestion reduction principles as the extension, albeit with the added value of providing hygienic and affordable housing close to nature. His well-known Linear City project (“Ciudad lineal”) for the Madrid Urbanization Company, including its context and execution challenges, also highlighted the management and speculation problems linked to the promotion of social housing (Muñoz del Pablo 2011) (Figure 2). Consequently, in the final decades of the 19th century, alternative responses to housing issues emerged from charitable institutions associated with industrial or mining sectors or from cooperative societies for inexpensive housing.
Indeed, it can be argued that the first models of social housing arose from industrial colonies and workers’ cooperatives. In the 19th century, when industrial location still depended on geographical production circumstances—due to the location of energy resources or raw materials—colonies settled nearby according to a distinctly paternalistic social project (Enrech 2005). The Catalan textile industry, the mining basins of Cantabria and Asturias, railway settlements, and other working-class neighborhoods linked to industrial operations distributed throughout the peninsula are architectural testimonies of that minimal worker habitat, albeit with incipient comfort and hygiene measures (Dorel-Ferré et al. 2008). Outside the control of industrial patronage, experiments in workers’ housing were conducted within the cooperative movement—viewed by some as a reformist model and by others as Marxist ideology. This was also the case in the context of charitable societies, albeit under a different paternalistic model, in this case religious. The company Constructora Benéfica in Madrid was a paradigmatic case of residential promotion for social interest activated by philosopher Concepción Arenal (Cabeza Sánchez-Albornoz 1986). Others, such as the Sociedad constructora de casas para obreros in Valencia or the Sociedad benéfica española de casas higiénicas para obreros y clases modestas in Madrid, attempted to provide affordable housing solutions that would later become models for the imminent regulation of cheap housing.
Nevertheless, these responses proved insufficient, prompting legislative measures from the state intended to minimize the increasingly pressing housing problem.

3.2. Hygienism and Regulation: Casas Baratas and the Modern Project

Since the mid-19th century, there have been successive state legislative proposals aimed at alleviating the housing emergency. In 1853, with a Royal Order for the construction of “houses for the poor”, and in 1881, with a Law on “construction of workers’ neighborhoods”, the foundations were laid for the regulation of Casas Baratas (“Cheap Housing”), finalized in a Bill by the Institute of Social Reforms in 1907 and in the first Law in 1911 (regulated in 1912). The term appears to have been borrowed from the French HBM (habitations à bon marché), although the Spanish case exhibited a somewhat interventionist character compared to the liberal experience in France (Castrillo Romón 2003). The goal of producing affordable worker housing was not very successful due to various reasons, including the interest of Development Boards (“Juntas de fomento”) in more profitable forms of development or bureaucratic and economic complications for municipalities. Consequently, the law underwent successive reforms in 1921 and 1924, enabling cooperatives, municipalities, municipal housing boards, and financial entities to support a limited number of initiatives (Arias González 2009).
Overall, despite attempts to standardize housing solutions, drawing on examples from Germany or Great Britain, the limited resources available and the constraints of space density aimed at maximizing utilization often resulted in residential architectures that were excessively constrained in terms of habitability and showed a moderate normalization of vernacular architectural features (Sambricio 2003). Examples such as the houses of the Unión Begoñesa in Bilbao, El Coto in Gijón, and El Hogar Futuro in Barakaldo were insufficient testimonies to the importance of these initiatives in northern Spain, facilitated by companies or cooperatives taking advantage of legislative benefits.
During the populist dictatorship of Primo de Rivera, the production of social housing was entrusted to the economic capacity of municipalities, cooperatives, and financing systems. However, the crisis of 1929, particularly felt in Spain from 1930 onwards, exposed the weakness of the system. While the experiments in social housing through Casas Baratas programs provided opportunities for typological reflection, management difficulties inherent in the limited profitability of developments, increasing housing needs leading to the emergence of irregular or informal settlements, and the consumption of difficult-to-connect urban territory required new architectural explorations in the 1930s.
These challenges persisted during the Republican period, despite a particular empathy shown in architectural circles towards minimal housing concerns. As early as 1929, parallel to CIAM II—focused precisely on L’habitation minimum—the Minimum Housing Competition was launched on the initiative of Fernando García Mercadal (then representing CIRPAC), marking a pioneering effort in focusing architectural professionals’ attention on the housing problem (García Mercadal 1929) (Figure 3). It is worth noting the prevailing confusion between “minimum housing” and the “reduction of housing size to a minimum” (Díez-Pastor Iribas 2003). This context was set against the backdrop of architectural modernization in European avant-gardes, addressing residential needs during the interwar period through rationalist and functionalist approaches, adopting Existenzminimum as a premise for the standardization and Taylorization of residential construction (Martín Hernández 2014).
Among the modest initiatives of Spanish modernity were proposals by architects of the Generation of 1925 in Madrid (a group named by Carlos Flores including García Mercadal, Rafael Bergamín, Luis Blanco, Casto Fernández Shaw, Carlos Arniches, and Luis Lacasa, among others) (Diéguez Patao 1997) and the Catalan group of GATEPAC (so-called GATCPAC, with representatives such as Josep Lluis Sert, Josep Torres Clavé, Joan Baptista Subirana, Sixte Illescas, and Germán Rodríguez Arias) (Solà-Morales 1980). Examples include Rafael Bergamín’s El Viso Colony in 1931 (exploring the possibilities of the ambiguous 1925 Economic Housing Law to build homes beyond the middle class), Secundino Zuazo’s Casa de las Flores (funded with help from the National Institute of Provision), and Sert, Torres Clavé, and Subirana’s Casa Bloc in 1932–1936 (directly commissioned by the Government of Catalonia), which reflected hesitant initiatives of Spanish architectural rationalism (Bohigas 1998) (Figure 4).
Thus, the role of other urban centers in integrating modernity with housing solutions becomes crucial. A notable example is Bilbao, where the municipal housing board—driven by José Manuel Aizpurúa—organized a competition in 1931 to define a series of residential blocks. This initiative aimed to build on municipal efforts under the cheap housing laws while incorporating Central European references and CIAM criteria, promoted in Bilbao by García Mercadal, among others. Emiliano Amann won the competition with a proposal for the Solokoetxe open block in a U shape, adopting typological models akin to those presented at CIAM Frankfurt a couple of years earlier, constructed between 1932 and 1933 (Figure 5) (Muñoz Fernández 2007).
Like many other cases, modern architecture endeavored to offer primarily typological and urban solutions. Subsequent legislation, first with the aforementioned 1925 Economic Housing Law, and later with the law known as Ley Salmón in 1935, aimed at building affordable rental housing—giving rise to what became known as the “salmon style”—also failed to curb a problem primarily expressed in social and economic terms, whose impact would multiply after the Spanish Civil War.

3.3. Reconstruction and Social Urgency

As might be expected, the civil conflict only exacerbated the housing problem and plunged the entire country into a state of residential uncertainty that was difficult to manage. Just days after the conclusion of the Civil War, the Law on the Protection of Reduced Rent Housing was published, which included the creation of the management instrument that would shape the housing policies of the regime: the National Housing Institute (“Instituto Nacional de la Vivienda”—INV). Separate from the INV, the General Directorate of Architecture (“Dirección General de Arquitectura”—DGA) was established, led by Pedro Muguruza. Additionally, at the end of 1939, the Syndical Work of Housing (“Obra Sindical del Hogar”—OSH) was founded as a tool for producing protected housing. Among these institutions with Falangist affinities, the foundations of new housing policies were designed, which did not represent as abrupt a break from previous policies as might have been expected (neither significantly qualitatively nor quantitatively altering the scarcity of social housing production). It can be simplified to say that this new organizational chart was initially responsible for creating settlements and housing complexes with basic hygienic conditions, using designs adapted to popular logics, and promoting typologies suitable for favoring a model of the Christian nuclear family (López Díaz 2002).
The need for reconstruction referred not only to the literal aspect of the word, a task especially entrusted since 1939 to the General Directorate of Devastated Regions and Reparations (“Dirección General de Regiones Devastadas y Reparaciones”—DGRDR), but also to the need to reformulate the country’s production structures. Additionally, there was a patriotic propaganda intention in the concept, as can be seen in the presentation of the magazine of the same name published by the regime (DGRDR 1940). In any case, the magazine served as a record of significant regional architectural interventions, many of them residential, such as the houses of Levantine rural architecture (Torrallas 1943), housing in the Pyrenees of Lleida (Miralles 1944), and multiple collective housing projects in different regions of the country. The forced autarkic period of the dictatorship, interventionist and nationalist, which lasted more than a decade after the Civil War, motivated a distancing from the industrial city and a specific concern for agricultural production, materializing in a defined strategy of rural recovery (Domènech Girbau 1978). The publication in 1946 of the Urban Leases Act (“Ley de Arrendamientos Urbanos”—LAU) with its intention to freeze rents should also be seen in this context of channeling resources towards the productive sector and limiting speculative urban investment as much as possible (Jubert 1974).
National Reconstruction Plans were declared in areas where destruction had exceeded 75% of the surface area, leading to urban and residential projects—many of them far from the major cities—that addressed the needs of these “devastated regions.” With the intention of focusing these concerns on the rural area, the INV held competitions for rural housing in 1939 and 1940, seeking proposals to dignify the residential fabric primarily linked to agriculture and at the same time promote the colonization of the interior territory, which had been in deep decline since before the war (similar competitions had been held in 1933 and 1935) (Álvaro-Tordesillas 2012). This concern was shared within the regime, which, through the DGRDR and in collaboration with the DGA and the OSH, promoted what it considered the most important—and propagandistic—actions for the country’s reconstruction (Sambricio 2020).
The National Institute of Colonization (“Instituto Nacional de Colonización”—INC), also created in 1939, joined this effort to regulate rural colonization policies. This was not entirely an original initiative, as an Interior Colonization Law had already been approved in 1907. The goal, again from a Falangist perspective, was to transform the countryside with a new class of worker-owners in adequate living conditions, occupying areas linked to the new distribution of irrigation systems in Spanish territory. The village (“poblados de colonización”) was proposed as a known settlement model (more for the control it allowed for than for the possibilities of production collectivization); the arrival of settlers was managed to occupy the territory and activate the agricultural production system, and a rational and efficient architecture was used for its deployment across the state’s geography for three decades (between 1940 and 1971) (Amado and Andrés 2024). José Luis Fernández del Amo, an architect for the INC (and also a promoter of the Spanish Museum of Contemporary Art), and Alejandro de la Sota and José Antonio Corrales were some of those responsible for the projects, achieving rural settlements of high architectural quality. As historically recognized, the studies of popular housing derived from this colonization process are probably the best expression of Spanish architecture of the era (Sambricio 1977)—Vegaviana in the province of Cáceres by Fernández del Amo (Figure 6) and Esquivel in the province of Seville by Alejandro de la Sota are part of the modern architectural imagination—while also representing the first step of Francoism towards capitalist restructuring (Solà-Morales 1976).
Agricultural housing became the main focus of the INV, to the point of allocating 80% of its funds to the construction of rural housing groups (INV 1941). Castilla y León, Madrid, and Catalonia were the regions that initially benefited the most from this decision, allowing for operations of some interest such as the Virgen del Castañar protected housing group in Béjar (Salamanca) or the Virgen del Pilar colony in Madrid, both projects by Francisco de Asís Cabrero, developed with the OSH. Besides Asís Cabrero, other architects who worked for the OSH included Ricardo Abaurre, Rafael Aburto, José Antonio Coderch, and the aforementioned Fernández del Amo and Alejandro de la Sota. Common characteristics can be identified in the projects, both constructively (recognizing traditional craftsmanship and even explorations with systems like the vaulted ceiling) and typologically, with urban pieces grouped with some degree of formal juxtaposition, blocks of two apartments per landing, and unit distribution in two, three, or four bedrooms. A representative example could be the 1943 houses in Toledo by Rafael Aburto (Figure 7).
During this period, urban operations were generally small-scale and focused on the reconstruction of neighborhoods and urban fabrics deteriorated by the war, especially in medium-sized towns and provincial capitals. While the urban layouts were renewed, the architectural character of the interventions was integrative, and the typological models (block groups with courtyards or organically articulated complexes) adapted to the surrounding contexts. In any case, the volume of operations was insufficient to address the existing housing crisis.
It is in this context of the housing emergency and INV planning that the drafting of the National Housing Plan 1944–1954 was promoted. It was proposed with the premise of addressing the country’s internal colonization needs and the new 1944 Affordable Housing Act (amended in 1948), aligned with the goals of the previous Ley Salmón and the reason for the emergence of various real estate companies interested in the potential benefits it could bring. At the end of this period, considering the difficulties and trying to redirect these objectives, the 1954 Limited Rent Housing Protection Act was drafted, which, in addition to reversing the rental tenure model trend in favor of ownership, provided its own building typology standards and would form the basis for future Official Protection Housing (“Viviendas de Protección Oficial”—VPO) legislation.

3.4. Functional City and Housing Estates

The political and economic climate of the country played a crucial role in the transition from the initial National Housing Plan to the new law of 1954. The disastrous postwar economic situation initially drove the dictatorship towards an unachievable recovery project focused on agricultural production and the subsequent recolonization of rural areas—a strategy that soon proved clearly insufficient and resulted in a housing crisis in the cities. The foreseeable new wave of urban immigration—into cities already suffering from a severe housing deficit—could not be managed with the means and resources available within the context of national isolation. This compelled the state to once again turn to industry and economically open up to the outside world. This shift is symbolically marked by the 1953 agreements with the United States and the admission to the United Nations in 1955. More importantly, it signified a change in the state’s economic strategies, increasingly embracing the liberal policies proposed by technocratic ministers by the end of the decade. Consequently, it is no coincidence that housing policies underwent significant transformation from this point onwards.
Technical limitations (shortage of construction materials, dominance of traditional methods, lack of industrialization…), economic constraints and the lack of private promotion, and the complexity of management fragmented among multiple institutions resulted in limited impacts from the initiatives undertaken during the pre-1950s period (generally small homes in modest low-rise developments). Professional forums within the architectural field contributed to this diagnosis during the National Assemblies of Architects in 1949 and 1952, where Bastida and Amann initially, and later Miguel Fisac, brought social housing to the forefront of the architectural debate. Competitions were held on the topic, some with significant repercussions, such as the 1949 Industrialization Competition on Housing in Spain, initiated by Eduardo Torroja and with substantial international participation, or the 1949 competition on “The Problem of Affordable Housing in Barcelona”, won by a team comprising Barcelona architects Mitjans, Moragas, Tort, Perpinyà, Balcells, and Sostres.
The economic boost from political opening influenced the construction sector, bringing a change in the scope and scale of interventions. The National Housing Plan of 1956–1960, the new technical regulations of the INV, the 1956 Land Law, the establishment of the Ministry of Housing in 1957, and the Social Emergency Law of the same year facilitated the updating of the management framework—aligned with the 1959 Stabilization Plan—for stable and abundant social housing production. The OSH, now with Francisco de Asís Cabrero as the new chief architect—and with the Syndical Housing Plan as a tool—became a fundamental body for affordable social housing production during this period.
The result was dozens of residential estates distributed across the country (with some aspirations of modernity in their formal layout, though with deficiencies in urban integration). There was a typological transformation evolving from courtyard buildings and H-shaped blocks to open-courtyard buildings and slender structures without courtyards. The Marcelo Usera group or the Gran San Blas in Madrid and the San Roque neighborhood in Badalona represent the shift in approach (and scale) in social housing production and the interest in large-scale operations on the outskirts of major cities. There was room for experimentation, as seen in the Puerta Bonita Colony in Madrid or the Montbau Estate in Barcelona (Figure 8), and significant projects, such as the Vite estate in Santiago by Julio Cano Lasso, the Diez Mandamientos complex in Seville by Luis Recasens, or the San Francisco de Sales neighborhood in Elda by Juan A. García Solera. Notable also were operations involving private agents now motivated by legislative changes—often driven by speculative potential—and the advantages offered to cooperatives in self-promotion processes, such as the unique housing group for the Santa María Micaela Commercial Agents’ Cooperative in Valencia by Santiago Artal.
Urban locations predominantly occupied by these residential developments share recognizable characteristics. On one hand, they are situated far from the historical city centers, even beyond the early expansion areas and urban extensions. They are located in economically viable areas, often close to peripheral zones that have been informally settled and later designated as residential development areas in the new general city plans. The absence of previous urban fabric or layouts turns most of these projects into ex novo operations typical of modern urbanism, based on regular grids and isolated blocks repeated in series. However, the influence of the Athens Charter is limited to the rational and speculative repetition of building models that seek construction efficiency to achieve the highest number of dwellings, without precise attention to the location and design of facilities, public spaces, or commercial areas that serve the large populations they will house. This situation will occur not only in the most populated cities but also in provincial capitals receiving internal migration, where occasionally these types of operations will eventually become catalysts for subsequent urban articulation and development operations (Núñez Izquierdo 2011; González 2015; Barrios Rozúa 2019).
On the other hand, the locations suffer from severe urbanization and infrastructure deficiencies, and in most cases, they emerge as semi-urbanized islands completely disconnected from the rest of the city. This will cause many of the period’s operations to suffer from a lack of resources for urbanization and maintenance, a situation that will, in turn, stigmatize the resident population in these residential complexes—often disadvantaged classes, low-income immigrant populations, residents from informal settlements, or even rehoused ethnic minorities. The very obsolescence of residential typologies will cause social imbalances (García Vázquez 2015). This situation, combined with construction precariousness (due to material shortages or rapid execution) and infrastructure deficiencies, will be the origin of many housing struggles by urban social movements and the main cause of the abandonment, eviction, and demolition of some projects (Hernández Falagán and Cristina 2022).
However, the minimal settlements, absorption settlements (“poblados de absorción”), directed settlements (“poblados dirigidos”), and absorption neighborhood units were probably the most interesting architectural manifestations of this period, for the value they added by connecting with external architectural modernity (Santas Torres 2000). The National Housing Plan envisaged various formats, notably the absorption settlements—aimed at housing the population that had proliferated in informal settlements and shanty towns—and the directed settlements—designed to channel the productive capacity of the population into self-built formats (Esteban Maluenda 1999). The Madrid experience of these settlements stood out for the typological quality of some projects, such as the Poblado Fuencarral A by Sáenz de Oiza (Fernández Galiano 1989) (Figure 9), although issues of territorial planning and urban disconnection arose (leading to the later disappearance of many of these neighborhoods) (Moya González 1997).
Overall, a third National Housing Plan (1961–1976) continued to stimulate private initiatives during a period of intense housing production (Muñoz 2003). Progress was made in the industrialization of the construction sector—mainly through the INV’s standardization and typification processes—although material shortages remained a considerable handicap, as did infrastructure and supply deficiencies in development areas (aspects that private initiatives left to public administration) (Vaz 2009). Interestingly, some of the most significant achievements of the late dictatorship (aside from estates like Bellvitge or Ciudad Badia in the Barcelona metropolitan area) proposed a striking experimental character, indicating fatigue with the residential estate model. This is exemplified by projects such as José Antonio Corrales’ Neighborhood Unit 3 in the Elviña Estate in A Coruña; Fernando Higueras and team’s protected housing on Avenida de América in Granada (Figure 10); Rafael Leoz’s experimental housing in Torrejón; and even the explorations of Ciudad del Espacio or the Walden Building in Sant Just Desvern by the Taller de Arquitectura. These developments foreshadowed an era of exhaustion and change that would manifest in all spheres of Spanish society.

3.5. Democracy, the Crisis of the Model, and New Urban Challenges

After the period of intense development at the end of the Francoist era, Spain’s housing production in the early 1980s led Europe. The housing stock produced—promoted and financed—was definitely part of the private property sector, ignoring policies that maintained a prominent public role in market regulation. A large quantity of housing was produced, but there was no maintenance of a public rental housing stock; instead, homes were offered for ownership in exchange for certain conditions of production, access, and sale (Guàrdia et al. 2022). This resulted in an oversized housing supply that faced urban deficits in major cities due to the lack of strategic and supramunicipal planning. Therefore, many resources in the 1990s, with the transfer of powers to regional and municipal entities, were allocated to infrastructure and planning corrections. This was the era of third-generation urban plans, as termed by urban planner Bernardo Secchi (Secchi 1989), who, along with Giuseppe Campos Venuti—another eminent Italian urban planner—was involved in Madrid’s 1985 General Plan. These plans aimed to correct the disjointedness of the development peripheries with infrastructures and amenities while also focusing on the recovery of historic centers and marginal areas of cities, thus recognizing the new urban reality (García Vázquez 2004).
It should be noted that while reforms to review and regulate social housing legislation were approved in 1964 and 1968, a new regulation for social housing (VPO) was approved by royal decree-law in 1978 following the political change. In this transformation process, the 1978 constitution provided for the transfer of housing responsibilities to autonomous communities. These regulatory circumstances, coupled with an inherited culture of promoting home ownership and a subsidized model of home purchase, led to the utilization of new urban land derived from planning (through new occupation or change of use resulting from urban tertiarization) for massive residential land production, especially following the liberalizing land law of 1998. Due to the economic crisis context, democratic municipalities leveraged industrial land reclassifications to residential land as a financing instrument. This led to exponential growth in the real estate business, albeit detached from the universal economic needs and possibilities of housing access, and the creation of a business bubble that burst with the 2008 international financial crisis.
Thus, the last few decades of the 20th century, politically, economically, and socially hopeful and optimistic due to the end of the dictatorship and the start of the transition, marked a painful diagnosis of the housing situation and recognition of the difficulties in activating new public policies capable of influencing the market to guarantee the right and access to housing for significant segments of the population. The inherited history of erratic housing policies in Spain, the tendency towards majority ownership, the imperfect welfare state model, the atomized administrative structure of responsibilities, the evolving legislative framework, and the liberal market dynamics (combined with the delayed impact of the 1973 oil crisis) directly influenced housing and residential land production at the start of the democratic period. In this context, facing the divergence between private market supply and affordable housing demand, cooperativism reemerged as a tool for producing non-speculative habitat. Major union cooperatives sought to boost affordable housing production through their subsidiaries, UGT with PSV (Promoción Social de Viviendas), which went bankrupt in the 1990s, and CCOO with VITRA (Viviendas para Trabajadores) and its regional versions (especially Habitatge I Entorn in Catalonia).
The housing proposals of the last few decades of the 20th century traversed the predicted residential landscapes: fragments of urban extension developed through partial masterplans articulated with the existing city and interventions of various scales aimed at the recovery of consolidated cores. Significant examples of large-scale interventions in stitching new peripheries include the Ramón y Cajal social housing in Seville by Vázquez Consuegra, the M30 housing by Sáenz de Oiza in Madrid, and the social housing by Manuel de las Casas in Alcobendas. Examples of rehabilitation and acupuncture interventions in historic centers include the housing on Calle del Carme by Josep Llinàs in Barcelona, the relocation housing by Eduardo de Miguel in Valencia, the Corrales de Vírgenes-Trompero housing by Carrascal and Fernández de la Puente in Seville (Figure 11), and the housing in the old town of Alicante by Dolores Alonso. In this order of interventions, the strategic character of some urban renewal actions must also be highlighted, often articulated through special interior reform plans. Such is the case of the PERI del Jonquet in Palma de Mallorca, attentive to the urban morphology of the historic city for structuring urban voids and the integrated restructuring of this city area (Roca and Fortuny 1985) (Figure 12), which also resulted in notable residential buildings like the housing in Puig de Sant Pere and Es Jonquet by the team of Guillem Oliver and Neus G. Iñesta.

4. Discussion

The complex panorama of these two centuries of social housing offers multiple reflections—some sociopolitical, others architectural—among which a few essential aspects can be highlighted, albeit at the risk of oversimplification.
Firstly, from a purely architectural perspective, social housing promotion has seen periods of significant quantitative production but has been especially notable for the quality of some of its proposals. Many housing projects, as illustrated in this text, have served as references in architectural debates and have built an image of modernity for the country. Given the usual urgencies in social housing, there have been episodes of typological and even technological experimentation when the country’s circumstances allowed for it. However, proposals for urban planning and articulation have been less frequent, at least during much of the period studied. Nevertheless, social housing architecture in Spain has consistently mobilized the professional architecture sector’s reflection, occasionally taking the initiative and catalyzing renewal processes that have influenced institutional decisions.
Despite everything, social housing in Spain cannot be considered a success story due to the limitations faced in addressing the problem. Each era has presented severe investment shortages in social housing, primarily manifested in construction deficiencies (due to material shortages) and the precarious urbanization of complexes—both because of the late arrival of certain supplies and the lack of services, facilities, or public spaces. Fortunately, legislative evolution and its development in the form of urban planning figures and municipal ordinances have progressively improved hygienic and living conditions (Oyón et al. 2021).
On the other hand, from a social and political perspective, the production of affordable housing in Spain has developed mostly as an unplanned response to an emergent need. Public residential promotion has been used as a remedial method to correct evident imbalances related to the housing access difficulties of each period. The proliferation of various forms of substandard housing at times and social crises at others have been the main triggers of housing policies. Legislative and regulatory responses have historically oscillated between interventionist and liberal policies (with a clear tendency toward the latter) depending on the economic situation of the time. There has been no sustained strategy for producing a public housing stock (which remains minimal due to the tendency towards property of homes) or incorporating housing as a significant pillar of the welfare state. Housing production has been considered a fundamental part of the country’s economic engine when necessary but not as a social guarantee for families during crises. This understanding helps explain the vulnerable state at the beginning of the 21st century when real estate speculation from a deregulated market and the liberal policies of the late 20th century confronted the financial crisis and economic collapse of 2008.

Author Contributions

Conceptualization, D.H.F. and M.R.N.; methodology, D.H.F. and M.R.N.; resources, D.H.F. and M.R.N.; writing—original draft preparation, D.H.F. and M.R.N.; writing—review and editing, D.H.F. and M.R.N.; project administration, D.H.F. and M.R.N.; funding acquisition, D.H.F. and M.R.N. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

Funding

This research was funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033/ and FEDER Una manera de hacer Europa, grant number PID2022-136744NA-C32.

Institutional Review Board Statement

Not applicable.

Informed Consent Statement

Not applicable.

Data Availability Statement

Data is contained within the article.

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest. The funders had no role in the design of the study; in the collection, analyses, or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript; or in the decision to publish the results.

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Figure 1. Houses for working-class families. Ildefons Cerdà, Barcelona, 1855. Source: Memoria del Anteproyecto del Ensanche de Barcelona.
Figure 1. Houses for working-class families. Ildefons Cerdà, Barcelona, 1855. Source: Memoria del Anteproyecto del Ensanche de Barcelona.
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Figure 2. Houses for working-class families at Ciudad Lineal. Arturo Soria, Madrid, 1905. Source: Urban Idade (https://urbancidades.wordpress.com, accessed on 10 June 2024).
Figure 2. Houses for working-class families at Ciudad Lineal. Arturo Soria, Madrid, 1905. Source: Urban Idade (https://urbancidades.wordpress.com, accessed on 10 June 2024).
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Figure 3. A proposal for the Minimum Housing Competition. José María Rivas Eulate, 1929. Source: Revista Arquitectura 123, August 1929.
Figure 3. A proposal for the Minimum Housing Competition. José María Rivas Eulate, 1929. Source: Revista Arquitectura 123, August 1929.
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Figure 4. Casa Bloc. Sert, Torres Clavé, and Subirana, Barcelona, 1932. Source: Revista AC. Publicaciones del GATEPAC, nº 6, 1932.
Figure 4. Casa Bloc. Sert, Torres Clavé, and Subirana, Barcelona, 1932. Source: Revista AC. Publicaciones del GATEPAC, nº 6, 1932.
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Figure 5. Solokoetxe residential open block. Emiliano Amann, Bilbao, 1932–1933. Source: Fundación DOCOMOMO Ibérico (https://docomomoiberico.com, accessed on 10 June 2024).
Figure 5. Solokoetxe residential open block. Emiliano Amann, Bilbao, 1932–1933. Source: Fundación DOCOMOMO Ibérico (https://docomomoiberico.com, accessed on 10 June 2024).
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Figure 6. Vegaviana. José Luis Fernández del Amo, Vegaviana, 1954. Source: Fernández del Amo Arquitectos (https://www.fernandezdelamo.com, accessed on 10 June 2024).
Figure 6. Vegaviana. José Luis Fernández del Amo, Vegaviana, 1954. Source: Fernández del Amo Arquitectos (https://www.fernandezdelamo.com, accessed on 10 June 2024).
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Figure 7. Houses in Toledo. Rafael Aburto, Toledo, 1943. Source: Revista Arquitectura 125, May 1952.
Figure 7. Houses in Toledo. Rafael Aburto, Toledo, 1943. Source: Revista Arquitectura 125, May 1952.
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Figure 8. Montbau Housing State. Giráldez, Subías, López Íñigo, Barcelona, 1957. Source: Revista Cuadernos de Arquitectura 61, 1965.
Figure 8. Montbau Housing State. Giráldez, Subías, López Íñigo, Barcelona, 1957. Source: Revista Cuadernos de Arquitectura 61, 1965.
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Figure 9. Poblado de Absorción Fuencarral A. Francisco Javier Sáenz de Oiza, Madrid, 1955. Source: Fundación DOCOMOMO Ibérico (https://docomomoiberico.com, accessed on 10 June 2024).
Figure 9. Poblado de Absorción Fuencarral A. Francisco Javier Sáenz de Oiza, Madrid, 1955. Source: Fundación DOCOMOMO Ibérico (https://docomomoiberico.com, accessed on 10 June 2024).
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Figure 10. Viviendas subvencionadas en Granada para la Caja de Ahorros. Fernando Higueras, Antonio Miró, Carlos Pfeifer, Granada, 1967–1968. Source: AGRAFA Archive, ETSAM.
Figure 10. Viviendas subvencionadas en Granada para la Caja de Ahorros. Fernando Higueras, Antonio Miró, Carlos Pfeifer, Granada, 1967–1968. Source: AGRAFA Archive, ETSAM.
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Figure 11. Corrales de Vírgenes-Trompero housing. Carrascal and Fernández de la Puente, Seville, 1995. Source: Carrascal-Fernández de la Puente Arquitectos (http://www.carrascal-fernandezdelapuente.com, accessed on 10 June 2024).
Figure 11. Corrales de Vírgenes-Trompero housing. Carrascal and Fernández de la Puente, Seville, 1995. Source: Carrascal-Fernández de la Puente Arquitectos (http://www.carrascal-fernandezdelapuente.com, accessed on 10 June 2024).
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Figure 12. PERI del Jonquet. Roca and Fortuny, Palma de Mallorca, 1985. Source: Revista Ciudad y Territorio, July–September 1985.
Figure 12. PERI del Jonquet. Roca and Fortuny, Palma de Mallorca, 1985. Source: Revista Ciudad y Territorio, July–September 1985.
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Table 1. List of consulted laws.
Table 1. List of consulted laws.
LawYearTopic
Ley de expropiación forzosa de 18361836Urban Regulation
Ley sancionada sobre inquilinato de casas y otros predios de 9 de abril de 18421842Urban Leases
Real Orden de 9 de septiembre 18531853Affordable Housing
Ley de ensanche de las poblaciones de 29 de junio de 18641864Urban Regulation
Reglamento para la ejecución de la Ley de Ensanche (Real decreto de 25 de abril de 18671867Urban Regulation
Ley de 18 de marzo de 1895 sobre saneamiento y reforma interior de grandes poblaciones1895Urban Regulation
Proyecto de ley sobre habitaciones baratas de 3 de junio de 19081908Affordable Housing
Ley de 12 de junio de 1911 relativa a la construcción de casas baratas1911Affordable Housing
Real Decreto de 21 de Junio de 1920 de la prórroga forzosa en los contratos de arrendamiento de fincas urbanas1920Urban Leases
Anteproyecto de reforma de la ley de 12 de junio de 1911 relativa a construcción de casas baratas1921Affordable Housing
Ley de 19 de abril de 1939 estableciendo un régimen de protección a la vivienda de renta reducida y creando un Instituto Nacional de la Vivienda, encargado de su aplicación1939Affordable Housing
Ley de Arrendamientos Urbanos de 19461946Urban Leases
Ley de 15 de julio de 1954 sobre protección de “viviendas de renta limitada”1954Affordable Housing
Ley del Suelo y Ordenación Urbana de 12 de mayo de 19561956Urban Regulation
Decreto de 13 de abril de 1956 por el que se aprueba el texto articulado de la Ley de Arrendamientos Urbanos1956Urban Leases
Ley 49/1960, de 21 de julio, sobre propiedad horizontal1960Homeownership
DECRETO 2131/1963. de 24 de julio por el que se aprueba el texto refundido de la legislación sobre vivienda de protección estatal1963Affordable Housing
Decreto 3964/1964, de 3 de diciembre, por el que se adapta al texto refundido y revisado de la legislación de viviendas de protección oficial1964Affordable Housing
Ley 40/1964, de 11 de junio, de Reforma de la de Arrendamientos Urbanos1964Urban Leases
Decreto 2114/1968, de 24 de julio, por el que se aprueba el Reglamento para la aplicación de la Ley sobre Viviendas de Protección Oficial1968Affordable Housing
Real Decreto 1346/1976, de 9 de abril, por el que se aprueba el texto refundido de la Ley sobre Régimen del Suelo y Ordenación Urbana1976Urban Regulation
Real Decreto-ley 12/1976, de 30 de julio, sobre inversión en vivienda1976Affordable Housing
Real Decreto-ley 31/1978, de 31 de octubre, sobre política de viviendas de protección oficial1978Affordable Housing
Real Decreto-ley 2/1985, de 30 de abril, sobre medidas de política económica1985Urban Leases
Ley 8/1990, de 25 de julio, sobre Reforma del Régimen Urbanístico y Valoraciones del Suelo1990Urban Regulation
Ley 29/1994, de 24 de noviembre, de Arrendamientos Urbanos1994Urban Leases
Real Decreto 2190/1995, de 28 de diciembre, sobre medidas de financiación de actuaciones protegibles en materia de vivienda y suelo para el período 1996-19991995Affordable Housing
Ley 7/1997, de 14 de abril, de medidas liberalizadoras en materia de suelo y de Colegios profesionales1997Urban Regulation
Ley 6/1998, de 13 de abril, sobre régimen del suelo y valoraciones1998Urban Regulation
Ley 8/1999, de 6 de abril, de Reforma de la Ley 49/1960, de 21 de julio, sobre Propiedad Horizontal1999Homeownership
Authors’ own elaboration.
Table 2. List of consulted publications.
Table 2. List of consulted publications.
TitleAuthors/EditorsYearPublisher
Arquitectura española contemporánea
(Flores 1961)		Carlos Flores1961Aguilar
Arquitectura española contemporánea
(Domènech Girbau 1968)		Lluís Domènech Girbau1968Blume
Arquitectura española contemporánea
(Bru and Lluís 1985)		Eduard Bru, Josep Lluís Mateo1985Gustavo Gili
Arquitectura española contemporánea: la década de los 80
(Rykwert 1990)		Joseph Rykwert1990Gustavo Gili
Arquitectura española contemporánea 1975–1990
(Levene and Márquez 1989)		Richard Levene, Fernando Márquez1989El Croquis
Arquitectura española del siglo XX
(Bardellou and Capitel 1995)		Miguel Ángel Bardellou, Antón Capitel1995Espasa Calpe
Arquitectura española siglo XX
(Urrutia 2003)		Ángel Urrutia2003Cátedra
Un siglo de vivienda social (1903/2003)
(Sambricio 2003)		Carlos Sambricio2003Nerea
La vivienda obrera en las España de los años 20 y 30. De la “corrala” a la “ciudad jardín”
(Arias González and de Luis Martín 2006)		Luis Arias González, Francisco de Luis Martín2006Funcoal
Habitar el presente. Vivienda en España: sociedad, ciudad, tecnología y recursos
(Montaner and Muxí 2006)		Josep Maria Montaner, Zaida Muxí2006Ministerio de vivienda
La vivienda protegida. Historia de una necesidad
(Sambricio and Lampreave 2009)		Carlos Sambricio, Ricardo Sánchez Lampreave2009Ministerio de vivienda
La vivienda moderna. Registro DOCOMOMO Ibérico 1925–1965
(Centellas et al. 2009)		Miguel Centellas, Carmen Jordà, Susana Landrove (ed.)2009Fundación Arquia
Vivienda colectiva en España. Siglo XX (1929–1992)
(Cánovas et al. 2013)		Andrés Cánovas, Carmen Espegel, José María Delapuerta, Carmen Martínez Arroyo, Rodrigo Pemjean2013TC Cuadernos
Vivienda colectiva en España 1992–2015
(Cánovas et al. 2016)		Andrés Cánovas, Carmen Espegel, José María Delapuerta, Carmen Martínez Arroyo, Rodrigo Pemjean2016TC Cuadernos
Estudio sobre la vivienda social del siglo XX en España
(Sanz Alarcón and Solano 2018)		Juan Pedro Sanz Alarcón, Montserrat Solano2018Junta de Andalucía
Ciudad de bloques. Reflexiones retrospectivas y prospectivas sobre los polígonos de vivienda modernos
(Díaz Medina and Monclús 2020)		Carmen Díaz Medina, Javier Monclús2020Abada
Authors’ own elaboration.
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Hernández Falagán, D.; Nicolau, M.R. A Brief History of Social Housing in Spain: Residential Architecture and Housing Policies in the 19th and 20th Centuries. Histories 2024, 4, 326-345. https://doi.org/10.3390/histories4030016

AMA Style

Hernández Falagán D, Nicolau MR. A Brief History of Social Housing in Spain: Residential Architecture and Housing Policies in the 19th and 20th Centuries. Histories. 2024; 4(3):326-345. https://doi.org/10.3390/histories4030016

Chicago/Turabian Style

Hernández Falagán, David, and Maribel Rosselló Nicolau. 2024. "A Brief History of Social Housing in Spain: Residential Architecture and Housing Policies in the 19th and 20th Centuries" Histories 4, no. 3: 326-345. https://doi.org/10.3390/histories4030016

APA Style

Hernández Falagán, D., & Nicolau, M. R. (2024). A Brief History of Social Housing in Spain: Residential Architecture and Housing Policies in the 19th and 20th Centuries. Histories, 4(3), 326-345. https://doi.org/10.3390/histories4030016

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