Ayuso’s ‘Squatter Alarm’ Rings Hollow: Few Madrid Residents Seek Aid Despite Government Claims
In Madrid, if Pedro Sánchez has his ‘Resistance Manual,’ Isabel Díaz Ayuso has her ‘Opposition Manual.’ This was evident on Monday when the Prime Minister announced tax breaks for landlords who do not raise rents for their tenants. Immediately, Díaz Ayuso’s government in Madrid reacted by criticizing the measure. “The first thing that needs to be done is to repeal the housing law,” said the baroness’s second-in-command, Miguel Ángel García Martín. “And secondly, there must be guarantees, legal certainty, that squatters are not protected, but rather small savers.”
The government spokesperson thus reignited the specter of squatting, which Díaz Ayuso periodically fuels with her speeches, meetings with affected individuals, and announcements of measures to combat this scourge. However, the colossal dimensions attributed to this crime in Madrid do not correspond with the data: for example, only about twenty affected individuals benefit from the water bill rebate from Canal de Isabel II, according to official documentation accessed by EL PAÍS.
The Numbers Don’t Lie: Minimal Uptake of Squatter Aid
Between January 1 and October 31, 2025, only 15 contracts corresponding to illegally occupied homes received rebates, of which nine were in Madrid capital, two in Fuenlabrada, two in Los Molinos, and one each in Arganda del Rey and Coslada. These figures do not indicate a sharp decline in the problem; rather, they highlight the minimal impact of the aid. The amount of these rebates in recent years further underscores this point: 6,543 euros in 2023, 3,820 in 2024, and 4,356 between January 1 and October 31, 2025. In comparison, rebates for large families or social exemptions exceeded one million euros in all those years.
“The official data from Canal de Isabel II dismantle the regional government’s alarmism about squatting,” denounced Diego Cruz, a PSOE deputy in the Madrid Assembly, regarding aid that requires initiating proceedings for trespassing or usurpation of housing, or for the recovery of possession against the individual who has occupied it without legal right. “Illegal occupation is a marginal phenomenon, and using it as the focus of public debate is a conscious maneuver, using lies as an argument, to cover up the failure of the Community of Madrid’s housing policy,” he added. “While a residual problem is inflated, which is no excuse for even a single person affected not being attended to promptly, the regional government, through the Social Housing Agency (AVS), maintains almost 800 empty, degraded, or in the hands of criminal networks, without acting on this situation, and more than 20,000 people are waiting for public housing,” he criticized. He concluded: “There is no emergency due to occupation; there is a housing emergency caused by political decisions.”
This newspaper requested the regional government’s opinion to understand its interpretation of the data. “For the Community of Madrid, the issue of housing occupation is very serious,” was the response from a spokesperson.
Conflicting Figures: 9,000 Occupied Homes vs. 1,096 Official Reports
In June, the Deputy Minister of Justice and Victims, María del Carmen Martín García-Matos, stated in the Assembly that “more than 9,000 homes (out of a total of three million) are illegally occupied in the Community of Madrid.” This figure is diametrically opposed to that provided by the central government, based on statistics from the National Police and Civil Guard, which through a spokesperson, reported 1,096 occupied homes between January and June 2025.
On that day in June in the Assembly, Ayuso’s deputy minister did not detail how many of those 9,000 homes she defined as illegally occupied were public. However, at the end of 2025, the AVS had “2,486 homes occupied without title, of which 508 were assaulted,” according to a second government spokesperson. The deputy minister also did not clarify whether in that figure of 9,000 occupied homes she was mixing the criminal offense of squatting with rent arrears, as Díaz Ayuso often does to defend her view that “inquiocupación” (a portmanteau of ‘inquilino’ – tenant and ‘ocupación’ – occupation) has “spread,” without providing statistics to support such a claim.
In any case, Ayuso has found support from affected associations, who do not believe official data, arguing that it only collects effective complaints and not cases where victims resolve the problem on their own (paying for squatters to leave or be evicted).
Helpline: A Quiet Line for a ‘Loud’ Problem
However, there are other data on the implementation of regional executive initiatives against squatting that, at the very least, do not reflect the alarm it transmits. For example, Díaz Ayuso promoted the creation of a helpline for victims during her second term. The service began operating on June 23, 2022, and by February 3, 2025, it had received 3,826 calls, which led to assistance for 219 citizens (seven per month) and prevented occupation or achieved eviction in 42 instances, according to the regional Executive. Between January 1, 2024, and October 15, 2025, according to data sent by the government to the regional Assembly, only 1,858 calls were received.
Since the same affected person can call multiple times, this figure does not even correspond to the number of people who seek help from the administration through this channel. A low number that perhaps has an explanation: at the end of 2025, there were 2,486 AVS homes occupied without title, of which 508 were assaulted. “Both the non-occupation of these properties and their illegal occupation entail lost income for the AVS,” lamented the Court of Auditors in a recent report. In the case of the capital’s municipal company, the figure reached 144 by October 2025. That is, probably one of the owners most affected by squatting in Madrid are the Madrid governments themselves, not private individuals.
Sources: Investigative journalism, official documents from Canal de Isabel II, statements from PSOE deputy Diego Cruz, statements from the Community of Madrid government spokesperson, statements from the Deputy Minister of Justice and Victims María del Carmen Martín García-Matos, data from the National Police and Civil Guard, report from the Court of Auditors, internal government data sent to the regional Assembly.
