The cobblestone paving of the oldest neighborhood in Cadiz, inherited from the stones that served as ballast for the ships returning from America, does not get along well with the small wheels of the trolley. Tourists drag their suitcases as best they can through El Pópulo and the bouncing of the suitcases against the ground creates trails of sound that come and go through the narrow cobbled streets. This image is now more common than that of the ladies pulling their daily shopping cart, who are becoming less and less visible. The figures of the boom The tourist industry in Cadiz is inversely proportional to the continuing population drain, against which neighbourhoods with a strong identity, such as El Pópulo and La Viña, have just declared a rebellion.
A cocktail of unemployment, lack of land for new construction and high purchase or rental prices have been taking their toll on the city’s population for more than 30 years. The municipality, with just 111,811 residents – according to the 2023 census data – is already the Andalusian capital with the lowest population density, in a province with 1,258,881 inhabitants, a figure that continues to grow. The bloodbath is not new, it has been going on for three decades, but the arrival of tourist housing on the scene has complicated the housing situation in the town, as stated by Cádiz Resiste, a neighbourhood group created just two months ago, spurred on by growing discontent and after the threat of eviction of María Muñoz, an elderly woman from El Pópulo who was saved in extremis by the intervention of Cádiz CF.
“The reality is palpable. Since 2018, some 6,000 residents have been evicted and 12,000 places have been created. [de vivienda turística]. The market is being restricted to this end only, rents are rising and access to housing is impossible,” complains the spokesperson for the entity, Jesús Ruiz. The deputy mayor of the Cadiz City Council, José Manuel Cossi, from the PP, recognizes “the concern for neighborhoods with significant tourist pressure and the response of residents who feel attacked because it seems that tourism is occupying more and more residential space.”
That is precisely what Lucio Rebollo feels. The 50-year-old from Cadiz lived for more than 25 years as a renter with his wife, his son and his disabled mother in an apartment on Buenos Aires Street. Until the spring of 2022, the property manager notified him and seven other families that the owner – owner of several properties in Cadiz – was terminating their contracts. “We heard that what he wanted was to make tourist rental homes,” says Rebollo.
Just then, the Cadiz City Council, governed at that time by José María González Kichi and his Adelante Cádiz party, approved a pioneering municipal regulation – one of the first in Andalusia – which declared the centre as a saturated area for new tourist rentals, and limited it to the Extramuros area and only up to the second floor. “So, since then, the owner must be preferring not to rent them out and wait for the season to open again. The houses there have been closed since then. It is very unfair,” complains Rebollo.
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Belling the cat on the back of housing in Cadiz is so complicated that all parties claim that the restrictions established by the municipal government of Kichi “have not had the expected effect”, as Cossi points out, despite the fact that the current PP team has accepted them – it has already cancelled almost 300 tourist homes – and is considering making them even tougher. Ruiz does not spare adjectives for the current legislative framework, which he describes as “lax, ridiculous and a joke”.
Rebollo has confirmed, first-hand, that the new regulation did not prevent him from moving to the neighbouring town of Puerto Real, where he has bought a home. And that is why Luis López Lainez, founder of a rental management company and delegate of the Association of Tourist Accommodations of Andalusia (AVVA) in the province of Cádiz, asks: “What has happened in these two years? Despite the limitation, we continue to talk about the housing problems in Cádiz. This whole issue is very politicised, it is in the interest to focus on Tourist Use Housing (VUT) so as not to focus on other problems.”
López —whose association is challenging the urban planning modification of Cádiz in court— complains that there is not even unanimity on the number of homes used for tourist purposes in the capital. Cádiz Resiste clings to the official figure from the Andalusian Regional Government register, 2,506, which leads them to claim that it is the Andalusian provincial capital with the most VUT per inhabitant. But the manager reminds us that this register is not up to date, assures us that many of the flats that appear in it are not used for that purpose, and reduces the figure to “between 1,500 and 1,600 homes”.
“The problem is empty homes and illegal rentals,” complains López, also referring to the flats that are only offered for residential use during the school season, a common pattern in the city for years. Cossi intervenes in the war of figures to acknowledge that there is no conclusive data – the City Council has commissioned a study from the University of Cadiz – and that right now they are using an approximate figure of “55,000 homes in the city, of which 5,500 are empty homes and 1,600 are used for lodging.”
Although each party differs on what percentage of the blame the VUTs have for the complicated housing reality in Cádiz, they all surrender to the evidence that renting a home in Cádiz is much more expensive than a decade ago. Specifically, twice the average price than in 2011, according to data from Idealista and the price variation compared to 2011 analysed by EL PAÍS. This impractical jungle was what Rebollo found when in the summer of 2022 he set out to find a new home. “The first, second and third option was Cádiz, but it was impossible. Who can afford the 1,500 euros a month that we found? It wasn’t enough with my salary and that of my wife,” complains the man from Cádiz, who found an escape in the purchase of a flat in Puerto Real, for which he pays 400 euros a month on a mortgage.
Ruiz says that the Calle Viva group has been warning about this reality since 2018, but it was not until last year that the debate became more evident in the city. The case of Mrs. María Muñoz’s farm, besieged by tourist housing, opened the floodgates of anger last May. And weeks later, on June 29, Cádiz Resiste managed to gather almost 3,000 people in a demonstration against touristification. “We warned that the wolf was coming and now it has arrived and has destroyed everything. It is not tourismophobia, it is that the tourist monoculture has caused a quota of citizen dissatisfaction that generates tension.”
López complains that opinions are “very polarised” against a rental market that is made up of small owners, “many of them from Cadiz”, and “by a professional sector that pays its taxes, with registered staff”. Meanwhile, Cossi asks for moderation: “We are concerned that certain discourses are going too far when the city has spent years demanding more tourism. The data we have does not come close to touristification. The critical problem is centred on preserving housing against tourist use”.
Rebollo is already watching the debate from a distance, settled in but not yet acclimatised to his new city: “My wife is having a hard time adapting to living here.” Meanwhile, he sees in his circle of friends how the diaspora continues, with relatives leaving for San Fernando or Jerez, and those who stay facing rent increases of “40%,” he says. “Tourism is good, there has always been some in Cadiz in the summer months, but now it is too much, all year round. The problem is that there will come a time when there will be no more Cadiz residents,” predicts the new resident of Puerto Real with resignation.
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