Dr Ana Santamarina, Dr Juan Roch, Sindicato de Inquilinas de Madrid
Funding period: 1 October 2026 – 31 March 2028
Type of funding:
Urban Urgencies
Award Number: USF-URU-260706
Partner organisations: Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (Spain), Sindicato de Inquilinas de Madrid (Spain)
Investigators: Dr Ana Santamarina, Mr Raúl San Juan López, Dr Juan Roch
Team members: Dr Javier Gil (CONICET), Dr Marta Il-Raga (Institut Metròpoli), Mr Lucas Vaquero (Universidad Complutense de Madrid), Mr Pablo Pérez (Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia), SJ Cooper-Knock (University of Sheffield), Alexander Baker (Cardiff University)
Contact: Dr Ana Santamarina
Abstract:
PRIVATEVICTIONS examines the rise of private “antisquatting” companies and the growing privatisation of eviction practices in Spain’s financialised housing market. Over the past decade, companies offering extrajudicial “express eviction” services have become increasingly visible in Spain. Although publicly framed as a response to squatting, these actors intervene in a much wider range of housing conflicts, including rent arrears, mortgage defaults and other situations of residential precarity. Their expansion raises urgent questions about housing rights, urban dispossession, private security, and the role of coercion in contemporary rentier urbanism.
The project aims to generate a systematic investigation of the antisquatting industry in Spain and to produce actionable knowledge that can support tenants, housing movements and public policy debates. Focusing primarily on Madrid, it will document and map antisquatting interventions, analyse the companies involved, and examine the tactics, institutional environments and real-estate dynamics through which they operate. Particular attention will be paid to how these practices affect racialised, migrant, gendered and working-class communities, and to the collective strategies developed by tenants and housing organisations to resist them.
PRIVATEVICTIONS is built on a collaboration between the Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED), the Sindicato de Inquilinas de Madrid and an interdisciplinary research team specialising in housing, urban inequality and social movements. Its main activities include the creation of a database and GIS mapping of cases, a national meeting of tenant unions and housing organisations, the co-production of a practical toolkit for resisting private eviction companies, policy reports, a podcast series and academic publications. The project will also convene an international webinar to connect the Spanish case with broader debates on housing securitisation and the privatisation of eviction enforcement.
By combining academic research with movement-based knowledge, PRIVATEVICTIONS seeks to strengthen collective responses to private eviction actors, inform regulatory debates and contribute to international urban studies scholarship on housing dispossession, urban governance and the right to housing.