Beyond Spain: what Lisbon and Berlin learned the hard way
Rent caps, referendums, and expropriation votes. Two cities that fought back — and what their victories and failures teach the Spanish movement.
59%
Berliners who voted to expropriate big landlords
Born to Pay Rent is about Spain, but the disease is continental — and so is the resistance. Two cities offer the most useful lessons.
Lisbon let the market run for a decade, golden visas and all, and watched its historic centre hollow out into a hotel district. Its late response — killing the golden visa property route, freezing new tourist licences — came after the damage was structural. Lesson one: timing matters more than design. A mediocre law in 2016 beats a perfect one in 2026.
Berlin did something no one thought was possible: 59% of voters backed expropriating the mega-landlords in a 2021 referendum. The vote wasn't implemented, and the city's earlier rent cap was struck down by courts. Lesson two: law follows power. The referendum didn't move the flats, but it moved the window of what's sayable — and every housing movement in Europe now cites it.
Spain sits between these two stories, with its own tools: a stressed-areas law, regional governments with real powers, and the strongest tenant unions in southern Europe. The question is whether anyone pulls the levers before Lisbon's decade repeats itself in every Spanish city at once.