The aim of this paper is to connect two processes that have been analysed independently to date and that have characterised the housing experience of the Spanish population. On the one hand, the consequences induced by the high density of Spanish urban spaces on other spatial spheres of people's lives and on the other hand, the traditional presence and the recent expansion of second home possession. In this context, we will demonstrate that, in Spain, a strong statistical relationship has been established between the location of main dwellings in a very dense urban context and a greater probability of having second homes. This relationship is better known in the scientific literature as the 'compensation hypothesis'. Copyright (c) 2007 by the Royal Dutch Geographical Society KNAG.

Recent foreign immigration has become the most important sociodemographic process in Spain. It impinges on many different social aspects, among them, the interrelationship between housing and population. More than 5 million immigrants have arrived during the last 10 years, responsible for about half of new households created since 2001. The size of Spanish demographic change due to immigration, as well as the predominance of a housing model based on home ownership, justifies the interest of the study. Attention will be focused on access to home ownership by long‐standing immigrants, who arrived between 1981 and 1991, observed in the 1991 and 2001 censuses, and compared with Spaniards. Their residential patterns can help us to predict the impact of the current immigration on the Spanish housing system. The conclusions point towards the beginning of a new heterogeneity in the Spanish housing system caused by a deficit of assimilation of the households with immigratory antecedents. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

No abstract