Comillas, a coastal town known for its modernist architecture, historic mansions and prominent summer visitors, is facing a housing shortage that residents say is making it increasingly difficult to live in the municipality year-round. The pressure extends to nearby towns such as Ruiloba, where affordable homes for rent or purchase are also scarce.
The town has 2,145 registered residents, but municipal mobile-phone measurements showed almost 26,000 daily visitors in mid-August 2026. According to the latest Population and Housing Census from Spain’s National Statistics Institute, 70% of Comillas’ housing stock consists of second homes that remain empty for most of the year.
Municipal data on major building permits issued in 2025 also reflects the weight of external demand. Forty percent of applications came from limited companies, while 45% were submitted by individuals whose registered address was outside Cantabria. Only 15% of applicants lived in Comillas.
Julián Rozas, the town’s first deputy mayor and a Socialist councillor, says current market conditions are pushing residents out of their own municipality. He describes the effects on families, local workers and school communities, while warning that Comillas could become a seasonal destination where residents leave to sleep elsewhere once the events and tourism activity end.
The housing shortage is also affecting local businesses. According to Rozas, some hospitality operators have had to buy and renovate old homes to accommodate seasonal employees because the lack of housing makes it difficult to recruit staff.
In October 2026, the municipal plenary approved commissioning an independent technical audit to prepare the report required under Spain’s Right to Housing Law. The study will establish whether Comillas meets the criteria to be declared a stressed residential market zone.
The council had already asked the Cantabrian government in November 2024 to prepare the necessary market studies. After what municipal representatives describe as two years without a response from the regional administration, the town has decided to finance its own report.
The audit will examine whether rent or mortgage costs exceed 30% of average household income and will compare housing-price growth with inflation. If the legal requirements are met, the designation could limit increases in new rental contracts and provide tax incentives of up to 90% in personal income tax for small landlords offering affordable rents.
The council has also restricted tourist accommodation through the local urban plan, which permits tourist-use homes only on ground floors. Mayor Teresa Noceda, of the Regionalist Party, says more than half of applications have been rejected. Of the 243 tourist-use homes listed on the regional website, the municipality has granted licences to 120 that comply with local planning rules.
Noceda argues that limiting tourist rentals will not be enough and calls for better information about vacant homes, as well as public land for protected housing. The council is processing the tenth amendment to its urban plan and is awaiting approval from the Regional Commission for Territorial Planning and Urbanism. Its aim is to make municipal plots available to the regional government for public housing construction.
Rozas, however, questions whether protected housing for sale would be affordable locally. He notes that official prices exceed 2,000 euros per square metre in Comillas, which would put an 80-square-metre home at around 200,000 euros. He therefore advocates prioritising affordable public rental housing and points out that the homes would enter the open market after 20 years.
The council must now determine how to contract the audit, either through a minor contract or an open tender. Rozas says the procedure should guarantee maximum transparency. He expects the work to rely substantially on public data from the National Statistics Institute and the Cantabrian Institute of Statistics, although he has not set a completion date.
He contrasts the situation with the Basque Country, where regional authorities prepare studies on their own initiative to help municipalities seek stressed-market designations. In Comillas, he says, the lack of action by the Cantabrian government has left the municipality to promote and pay for the process itself.
Sources: elDiario.es.