Extracting rents through foreclosures: The rescue of Catalunya Banc as a new urban strategy following the burst of the Spanish bubble

Abstract

Using the paradigmatic example of Catalunya Banc, this paper analyses the Spanish varieties of the new financial engineering used to appropriate urban rent by home dispossession. It aims to contribute to the study of the new forms of financialization that have appeared since 2008. Particular attention is given to the role of the state, the emergence of private equity funds as global real estate owners and how this has translated into a wave of evictions due to mortgage foreclosures. In short, this article highlights the implications of the uneven development resulting from the exhaustion of the so-called Spanish model of accumulation during the real estate boom years. Keywords

Foreclosures and Evictions in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria during the Economic Crisis and Post-Crisis Period in Spain

“…Finally, the studies of Gutiérrez and Vives-Miró [36,37] make use of the registry of empty houses in the hands of financial entities created by the Catalonian Regional Government in 2016. The aim of this initiative was the creation of a special tax to be applied on these assets.…”

Coalitions and Public Action in the Reshaping of Corporate Responsibility: The Case of the Retail Banking Industry

“…In this sense, retail banking is a foundational infrastructure (Froud et al 2018). Yet instead of ensuring this basic functionality, banks' actions to defend profitability have had deleterious effects on their customers, including mis-selling of financial products, collapse of small business lending, mortgage foreclosure and retail branch closures (Froud et al 2017;Paulet et al 2015;Vives-Miró and Gutiérrez 2017). These behaviours are contrary to those we might expect from banks as socially responsible actors; and they are in contrast to the positive impact banks can have on financial inclusion, economic and social development (Fernández-Olit and de la Cuesta-González 2014).…”