IN DEPTH: How bad is Spain's homelessness problem?

Depending on your perspective and where you come from, you might think Spain has either a lot or very few homeless people.

If you’ve come from a small town in Sweden or Switzerland, for example, or even rural Spain, taking a night stroll through central Madrid or Barcelona might shock you in terms of the numbers of personas sin hogar or sin techo (homeless people) on the street.

If you’ve come from a big city in the UK or US, however, you might think the number of homeless in Spain is, relatively speaking, quite low.

As The Local reported recently, in specific parts of Spain the problem is growing. Madrid Barajas’ airport, for example, has seen a steep rise in the number of homeless people sleeping there overnight.

According to stats from Spain’s Aena airport operator and Madrid’s City Hall, there are now between 370 and 500 homeless people at Barajas alone, whilst a decade ago they numbered just 40.

After receiving an email from one of our readers in Girona concerned about the growing number of homeless people in the Catalan city and asking us to look into the issue on a national level, our staff at The Local have been researching the matter to get a clearer picture of homelessness in Spain.

READ ALSO: Madrid airport's worsening homelessness problem

How many are there?

Of course, by nature of the transient lifestyle many homeless people live, it’s hard to put an exact number on how many homeless people there are in Spain.

Looking at the latest official figures, from Spain’s 2022 NSI Homeless People Survey for 2022, officially speaking there were 28,552. There are some methodological issues with how the Spanish state collects these statistics that we’ll touch on later, but it’s a good rough guide to understand how the problem has evolved in Spain in recent years.

2022 was three years ago now, so judging by longer-term trends (more on that below) we can assume this has gone up since then. With the volatility of the housing market in Spain in the post-pandemic period, this seems almost certainly to be the case – especially in Spain’s major cities.

Some reporting now puts that figure at over 40,000 by the end of 2024. Spanish charity Caritas assisted 42,336 homeless people in Spain in 2023, a 7.2 percent increase compared to the previous year, according to data from the ‘No One Homeless 2024’ campaign.

Granted, some of the people may have been attended twice or in different locations, but using that figure as an upper threshold, it seems reasonable to conclude that the number of homeless in Spain in 2025 is somewhere roughly around 35-40,000 at the very least.

Of course, many homeless people won’t be in contact with charity or social services and therefore live outside the statistics, meaning the number could be much higher still. Similarly, housing website Idealista reports that shanty towns and slums in Spain have soared by 25 percent in a decade.

Who are the homeless people in Spain?

Reporting from Europa Press has helped shed some light on the demographic breakdown of homelessness in Spain. 58 percent of homeless people in Spain are foreigners and half of them are between 30 and 54 years old, according to the results of the 'Nightly Homeless Counts in Spain 2023' project.

However, among young homeless people, foreigners are overwhelmingly represented: 83 percent of homeless people under 30 in Spain are foreign, whereas older homeless people are more likely to be Spanish.

As for the origin of homeless Spaniards, the data suggest that most stay close to home. Specifically, based on province of birth, 59 percent were identified in the same province in which they were born, while the remaining 39 percent came from other provinces.

Zooming out a little, by geographical region, the main region of origin among the homeless in Spain is the Maghreb (33 percent), followed by the EU (27 percent) and South America (18 percent).

On a nationality level, 62 percent of all homeless people of foreign origin in Spain come from just five countries: Morocco (27 percent), Romania (18 percent), Colombia (8 percent), Algeria (7 percent) and Senegal (3 percent).

Homeless women of foreign origin are more likely than men to come from Europe (41 percent compared to 27 percent) and Latin America (38 percent compared to 17 percent). In contrast, the proportion of women coming from Africa (20 percent) is much lower than that of men (54 percent).

Is Spain's homelessness problem getting worse?

As explored earlier, though exact figures are tough to come by, homelessness does appear to have been getting worse in Spain in recent years.

According to data from the NSI’s Survey of Centres and Services for Homeless People, the average daily occupancy of homeless accommodation resources was 17,800 people in 2020, compared to around 18,000 in 2010 and just over 10,000 in 2006. That's a clear upward trend, however the numbers are measured.

In general terms, the 2022 survey data shows a significant increase in the number of homeless people in the country of around a quarter (24.5 percent) compared to the number of people identified in the same survey carried out in 2012.

It should be noted that these statistics are not entirely reliable. Many data sets rely on occupancy rates in homeless shelters and accommodation, something that not all homeless people use or have access to.

Other surveys count the number of rough sleepers, a solid methodology for a broad understanding in city centres but not including the many homeless people who sleep rough but not on the street, or in squats or similar situations that don’t show up in the stats.

How does Spain compare to other countries?

Though Spain’s homelessness problem is clearly increasing, in terms of sheer numbers it pales in comparison to many other countries.

Looking at the World Population Review site (which uses that 28,000 figure for Spain) neighbouring France has 333,000 homeless people. In the UK, that figure is 380,000.

Germany has around 262,000 and Italy 96,000.

Though rising over time, Spain’s homelessness problem doesn’t seem quite as acute as in other countries yet.

Solutions

Though homelessness may be comparatively less of a problem in Spain than in some other countries, the instability of Spain’s property market in recent years means many are at risk of poverty or homelessness.

According to a Bank of Spain report, about 45 percent of people living in rented accommodation are at risk of poverty or social exclusion, the highest proportion in Europe.

Similarly, Spain has historically underinvested in social programmes to help the homeless. A government report on homelessness states that: “Traditionally, Spanish public administrations have allocated less public spending to the social policies most directly related to homelessness and housing exclusion than its neighbouring countries.

In 2019, the latest year for which data is available, European expenditure on exclusion was €217 (in purchasing power parity or PPP) per capita, and on housing €130 (in PPP) per capita(2). In Spain, the expenditure amounts to €64 and €30 (in PPP), respectively. Spanish spending in these two areas of social protection is equivalent to 27 percent of that in the Eurozone.”

Investing in social programmes to help the homeless would be a start, but meaningful reform to Spain’s social housing would also help. Spain's social housing stock is just 1.5 percent of all homes compared to a European average of 9 percent.