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.

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