The math teacher at the centre of the fight against gentrification
04 February 2025
On Friday, 800 people gathered around Casa Orsola, a housing block in Barcelona, to halt the eviction of Josep Torrent, one of only five tenants remaining in a building that was recently acquired by an investment fund in order to be converted into short-term rentals.
The property, a modernist landmark commissioned in 1913 by Italian industrialist Giovanni Orsola, comprises 27 apartments and sits in the central Eixample district: a historically working-class area facing a housing shortage due touristification that has seen a 52% increase in rent prices since 2020.
A math teacher at a nearby high school, Torrent moved into Casa Orsola in 2002. He started out renting a two-bedroom unit with a friend, eventually settling into a place of his own for €700 a month. He knew his neighbors by name and was acquainted with his landlord, a man whom he saw making repairs in the common areas every week.
This all changed in November 2021, when Lioness Inversiones LLC, a Barcelona-based real estate investment trust, purchased the property and notified tenants it would stop renewing their leases. Most of them packed their bags and left, their apartments being immediately repurposed as short-term rentals and put up for rent for upwards of €2,800 a month. But Torrent stayed put. Unable to afford these prices and having nowhere to go, when his lease expired he chose to remain in his apartment and continued paying his €700 rent just like he had done for 19 years.
He then received an eviction order, which after three years of legal contests led to Friday's failed removal. Another attempt was expected today, but Torrent announced on Monday that it had been pushed back to February 18.
 | Carlos Caselles The story of this 49-year-old, and perhaps of those cheering him on, is one about the growing struggles of lower and middle-class Europeans to afford a home. In 2022, EU citizens spent 22.2% of their income on housing, a study by the OECD shows. For renters in Bratislava, Mallorca or Madrid, this share exceeded 30%. Those looking to buy do not have it any easier. On average, EU house prices grew by 48.1% between 2015 and 2023, with buyers in the Netherlands (83.3%), Portugal (105.8%) and Hungary (172.5%) facing significantly sharper increases, according to Eurostat. In Spain, where two-thirds of people aged 18-34 cannot afford to move out of their parents', the youth has been taking to the streets for months, dangling their keys in the air as a sign of protest in a gesture labeled the 'llaverazo' ('key blow'). Similar protests have erupted in Portugal, Italy and Greece, where gentrification and real estate speculation have pushed the average age of young people leaving the parental home to 30 – 4 years above the EU average of 26. In countries like Denmark and Austria, whose capital Vienna's social housing program is often praised as the best in Europe, public intervention has kept prices affordable and allowed young people to live on their own at an average age of 21 and 25, respectively. |
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