Britons dreaming of a sunny new life in Spain are in the firing line after growing anti-expat backlash has hardened into threats to ban them from buying property among other measures targeting non-EU citizens.
Foreign citizens are bearing the brunt of increasing anger from locals, who say they are unable to afford to buy homes because prices are being driven up by outsiders.
Regional authorities in popular locations including Ibiza, Mallorca and Barcelona are now threatening to prevent non-European Union citizens or non-residents from purchasing property.
Spain has long been a favoured destination for British buyers looking for a holiday home on the continent.
Holidaymakers who rent accommodation have not escaped unscathed, either. MPs in Catalonia voted last week to double the tourist tax, making it one of the most expensive holiday destinations in Europe.
Tourists could be taxed as much as €15 per night as the region grapples with the housing crisis. Hotel guests will be charged from €10 to €15, up from €5 to €7.50.
Anger at expats and tourists has been growing in recent years as rising house prices make life unaffordable for locals, who blame holiday lets and foreign buyers. Only months ago, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said he would impose a 100 per cent tax on non-EU citizens who bought property in an attempt to combat the country’s housing crisis.
In Barcelona, the country’s second-biggest city, the Socialist mayor has said Britons should be banned from buying holiday homes after years of friction in which foreigners have been blamed for pricing out locals.
Jaume Collboni said he would prohibit non-EU citizens from buying homes as second residences or holiday homes in the city.
Collboni, who has already announced that he will do away with all 10,000 tourist flats by 2028, said foreigners were exacerbating the housing crisis, which is afflicting Spain like other European countries.
“I would ban non-EU foreigners from buying second homes in Barcelona,” Collboni told La2Cat, Catalan-language television station last week. “For those who buy to speculate or to rent out, the gravy train is over in Barcelona.”
Collboni cited the upmarket L’Eixample neighbourhood, where Rolling Stones guitarist Ronnie Wood is one of the best-known foreign owners.
The mayor’s comments are indicative of growing anger among left-wing groups but also among increasing numbers of ordinary citizens across Spain who are struggling to afford homes in their own towns and cities.
And they blame the growing numbers of foreigners. The number of foreign-born people in Barcelona has risen from 10.8 per cent of the population in 2002 to 26.5 per cent last year, according to city council figures.
The last few years have seen protests against overtourism and immigrants in the worst-hit cities including Barcelona and other holiday hotspots. Another demonstration is planned for today in Barcelona, against corporations that buy up blocks and turn them into tourist flats.
In the city, more than a quarter – 460,000 of the 1.7 million population – were born overseas, council data for June 2025 showed.
Barcelona has the highest population of foreign-born residents in Spain. Almost half of those aged 25-39 are foreigners.
The largest nationalities among those born abroad in Barcelona come from Italy with 53,400 people, followed by Argentina, Colombia and Pakistan. About 10,000 Britons live in the Catalan capital.
Of the 680,000 homes in Barcelona, households with foreign people continue to rise, both those where all members are foreigners (13.4 per cent) and those where Spaniards and people of other nationalities live together (14.2 per cent), according to council data from 2025.
Anya van der Drift, a British educational consultant from London who has lived in Barcelona for 14 years, advises foreign families who want to move to the city about school options.
“There does seem to be an increase in discussions about expats and how newcomers are influencing the local culture. Some locals don’t necessarily see the changes as a problem but some do,” she said.
She said Spaniards were generally welcoming towards new arrivals but it helped to learn the language.
But Britons also face being banned from buying property in Mallorca, Menorca and Ibiza under plans being considered by the government of Balearic Islands, now among Spain’s most expensive regions. More than 19 million Britons visited Spain last year.
The pressure is acute in the Balearics, with around 90,000 homes owned by foreign nationals – equivalent to 16 per cent.
A report by Terraferida, a Mallorcan activist group found, five properties were being built or extended in rural land on the island every week between 2021-2024, most of them by foreigners or for holidaymakers.
“They are big, luxury properties, with swimming pools and gardens, and most are focused on the tourist market,” said Terraferida spokesman Jaume Adrover.
The islands’ left-wing party, Més per Mallorca, suggested introducing a ban on non-residents buying property. “Residents” are defined as people who have lived on the islands for at least five years.
Luis Apesteguia, a Més per Mallorca MP, said “extraordinary measures” were needed to tackle overtourism. He said: “We have to prioritise the houses that are for living in – not for those who want to speculate and continue with this game of Monopoly.”
Apesteguia said that if the bill were passed, it could pave the way for similar laws nationwide.
The proposal to ban foreign property purchases would mirror regulations in Denmark that require UK-born buyers to have lived in the country for at least five consecutive years.
Across Spain, 14.6 per cent of the 49.5 million population has foreign nationality, according to the Spanish National Statistics Institute published in January 2026. At least 10 million people were born outside the country.
The biggest groups of foreign nationals were Moroccans (1.17m), Colombians (980,000) and Venezuela (680,000), with Britons in sixth with 280,000.
Last year, foreigners bought 97,000 properties in Spain, 14 per cent of the total, while Britons bought 7,700 – just 1 per cent, according to figures from the Spanish registrars.
Mark Stucklin, a British property expert who runs the Spanish Property Insight website, said: “Britons make up a tiny proportion of the buyers of properties in Spain. To say they are worsening the housing crisis is not true. It is the lack of affordable housing, which is the problem.”
He said most Britons bought properties in areas with large British communities like the Costa Blanca, not in cities like Barcelona where there was pressure for affordable housing.
The Bank of Spain has said the country has a shortage of 500,000 homes.
But Xavier Pascuet, a tourism consultant, disputed the suggestion that foreigners were being scapegoated. “The issue is not nationality. It is the difference between local wage capacity and ‘global capital’. Houses are not expensive. They are expensive for us,” he said.
“In places like Barcelona and the Balearic Islands, housing supply is limited. When buyers – who are unlimited – enter the market with significantly higher purchasing power, prices increase.”
Pascuet said he backed restrictions on foreign buyers in areas of cities like Barcelona where there was a high demand for housing.
“The strongest approach is not simply banning foreigners. It is limiting non-resident and non-primary residence purchases, curbing speculative accumulation and protecting the right to housing.”
However, the Prime Minister’s move last year to impose a 100 per cent tax on non-EU citizens who bought property has failed to happen so far. It has not been debated in the country’s parliament where it is likely to face opposition from right-wing parties.
Property in Spain is taxed at 10 per cent for new-build homes and 6 per cent for existing properties.
Sánchez said 27,000 foreigners from outside the EU – including UK nationals – had purchased homes in Spain in 2023 “not to live in them, but to speculate”.
Furthermore, banning non-EU citizens from buying properties may run into legal obstacles as the Spanish constitution defends the right to own property but it does stipulate this should be in the public interest.
Sebastià Sagreras, of the centre-right People’s Party, warned that EU regulations meant the proposals could not be fulfilled and confirmed his party would vote against them.
Marc Pons, of the left-wing Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party, said the government could “not rely solely on this solution to the problems”, even if it helped stop price rises.
