Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez announced on Monday that Spain will discontinue its “golden visa” program, which grants residency to foreign investors in exchange for a 500,000 euro real estate investment, in an effort to reduce the rampant speculation plaguing many Spanish cities.
While on a visit to a region close to the southern city of Seville, Sanchez declared that the government was planning to “do away with the so-called golden visa scheme that allows access to residency in exchange for investing 500,000 euros in property.”
The government will be able to combat “speculative investment” in real estate, which is keeping “many young people and families” from accessing housing, he said. The move will be approved at the cabinet meeting on Tuesday.
The scheme — which was introduced in 2013 when the economy was struggling and Spain wanted to attract foreign capital — offers non-EU investors a three-year work and residency permit in exchange for investing at least 500,000 euros ($542,000) in property or a Spanish company.
“Today, 94 out of every hundred visas of this nature are linked to property investment that is concentrated in large cities,” he said, pointing to Barcelona, Madrid, Malaga, and Alicante in the south, Valencia in the east, and Spain’s Mediterranean Balearic Islands.
It was almost hard for people who lived, worked, and paid taxes in these areas to find decent housing because of “a lot of tension in the housing market,” according to Sanchez.
Several southern European nations that implemented similar programs during the financial crisis have recently tightened regulations or discontinued the offer completely in an effort to alleviate their individual housing crises.
Portugal discontinued its golden visa program in February 2023, which had sharply increased housing prices. Late last month, Greece tightened the regulations on its own program, increasing the required investment to as much as 800,000 euros.
These visas are “a European disgrace. You can’t grant someone a residency permit just because he’s a millionaire”, said Culture Minister Ernest Urtasun who is also the spokesman for the radical leftwing Sumar party, part of Spain’s Socialist-led ruling coalition.
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