Built in Contradiction: A Parallel Reading of Housing Policies in Portugal and Spain, 1974-1985
Event Title
EAHN 2024 Athens
Year (definitive publication)
2024
Language
English
Country
Greece
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Abstract
Public housing policies pursued in Portugal and Spain between 1974/1975 and 1985 were marked
by divergent or even contradictory initiatives: if a 1976 decree confined the Spanish State to a
merely regulatory role, with no part in developing or managing public housing, its 1981-1983
Triennial Plan continued in fact to rely mostly on public spending for housing development. In
Portugal, a drastic increase in the 1975 budget of the government agency Fundo de Fomento da
Habitação (FFH) contrasted with the first mortgage subsidising policies in 1976 and the stringent
effects of IMF’s intervention in the country in 1977.
Our paper explores these contradictions, in a parallel analysis of state intervention in housing
development in those two countries between 1974 (Portuguese revolution) and 1985 (European
integration) that asks: How did the belated construction of a welfare state, seeking to include
housing as one of its pillars, coexist with international tendencies towards economic
liberalisation? How were these contradictions integrated into legislation? How may the
differences in the Portuguese and Spanish processes of democratisation have contributed to
diverse housing policies and to define the role of the state in each case? How did new housing
policies unfold in democratic transition – in contrast or continuity with previous approaches?
The paper proceeds to focus on this last question, looking at the construction of low-rent housing
in disadvantaged areas, outside larger urban centres, and using specific schemes to discuss how
existing processes, institutions, and legal frameworks were appropriated, adapted, transformed,
or preserved during the first years of democracy. In Portugal, we examine the transformation of
the FFH following the revolution and how it appropriated existing structures of corporative Estado
Novo with housing development roles. In Spain, we look at the role of religious charities in housing
provision, and how they persisted through the democratic transition period.
Acknowledgements
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