Legislative Proposal Seeks to Remove Real Estate Option for Spain’s Golden Visa
Más País, a left-wing Spanish political party that holds fewer than one percent of seats in Spain’s Congress of Deputies (and no seats in the Senate) has registered a bill in Congress that seeks to abolish the EUR 500,000 real estate investment option for the country’s golden visa program.
Specifically, the party proposes to change the definition of “significant capital investment” to mean an investment of at least EUR 2 million in government bonds or EUR 1 million for investments in Spanish companies and deposits in Spanish banks.
In the view of party leader Iñigo Errejón, Spain’s golden visa program encourages “speculation” in real estate, driving up the cost of housing, and maintains that it negatively affects the national economy. Golden visa investors, he said during a press conference on Tuesday, “expel the local population” by driving “a surge in prices.” Errejón further pointed out the EU’s misgivings about golden visas – “they have already warned us this is a murky business” – and claimed investments in such programs were carried out without vetting the origin of the capital:
“The Spanish State does not control where this money comes from, nor how it was obtained or what the rest of the relatives who come do. It is basically an elitist shortcut […].”
Parts of Spain, said Errejón, “are becoming colonies of people who do not want anything to be controlled. The state does not check where the money comes from, so you can buy a half-million-euro house. […] We have presented a very simple reform to eliminate this class advantage that is given to some, which is bad for transparency, and to contain prices.”
In its submitted bill, Más País proposes to reform the legislation in a way that “guarantees an effect on the real economy without distorting the real estate market in Spain.”