ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the state intervention that has guided the Spanish urbanization model, operating at different levels of governance. It explores the consequences of the housing-bubble burst for municipalities and households and central government policies. The chapter suggests that comparative analysis should be done in future research between the ways in which political leadership has mattered in urban questions in two Spanish regions before and after the real-estate crisis: Madrid and Catalonia. Central government has had a key role in framing fiscal incentives for housing ownership, while some local and regional administrations have engaged in short-term forms of inter-spatial competition for public and private resources and regulatory under-cutting in order to attract investment. The more recent housing bubble constituted a qualitative step forward in housing ownership dependence on financialization. The real-estate sector was already an important component of the Spanish economy by the 1990s.
