Documenting Spain’s construction boom and bust

Between 2000 and 2008, around five million homes were built in Spain, many of them along the country’s extensive Mediterranean coastline, while others were part of vast residential estates constructed on greenfield sites, often in rural or protected areas. Seven years after the country’s property bubble burst, estimates suggest there are at least three million properties standing empty, along with tens of thousands more that are unfinished.

Spain’s independent Sustainability Observatory says that between 1986 and 2006, an average of 44 hectares of land per day was being developed

In the absence of an official census on the impact of the property boom and bust, a number of online citizens’ initiatives have begun documenting the evidence: Ruinas modernas (Modern ruins) focuses on half-completed private residential estates; Nación Rotonda (Roundabout Nation) on new road building; Ecologistas en Acción (Ecologists in Action) on the wider impact on the environment; and Basurama on garbage disposal and landfills.

Last year, the organizers of these projects met at the Arquinset festival in Barcelona, an annual forum to discuss architecture, public spaces, and urban planning. They decided to share the information they have spent years collecting: around 800 cases that include ghost towns, abandoned public buildings, half-finished infrastructure, and vast, deserted industrial estates.

The result, announced at Arquinset’s 2015 edition earlier this month, is a newly created online database called cadaveresinmobiliarios.org, which invites the public to document empty or unfinished property developments.

Julia Schultz-Dornburg has been cataloguing the legacy of Spain’s construction boom for more than a decade, and in 2012 published Ruinas modernas. Una topografia del lucro (or, Modern Ruins, a topography of profit) in which she documents “ruins, interesting places, the spaces between what was and what could have been and that have many layers: architectural, economic, anthropological, sociological, political…” she says, pointing out that these failed projects “are the responsibility of many people, and nobody was able to stop them.” Spain’s independent Sustainability Observatory says that between 1986 and 2006, an average of 44 hectares of land per day was being developed.

She explains that the new online database provides different perspectives on the impact of each property development: the environment, land use, image, mobility, health, and the lifestyles of residents.

Nación Rotonda was set up by three civil engineers and an architect who have used Google Earth to locate unfinished or empty construction projects. “These are infra-neighborhoods, although they are not the fruit of development, but rather of speculation, places with no services, and that are neither town or countryside, and whose inhabitants have to live with the moral burden of being trapped in the worst of two worlds,” says Miguel Álvarez, one of the three.

Basurama’s 6,000 km project explores the “metabolism” of Spain’s towns and cities through photographs of “landscapes related to production, consumption and disposal of materials and energy, as well as infrastructure and residential developments,” says founder member Pablo Rey, who also invites the public to contribute. “The incredible thing about all this is that despite all the information available, we haven’t learned anything, because the authorities are once again talking about construction as the answer to the country’s economic problems,” he says.

“Cadaveresinmobiliarios.org will allow us to compare ideas about what has happened. Until now, this is a subject that has been approached purely from an economic angle, in terms of bailouts, debt… but these figures have little to do with reality,” says Álvarez. Schultz-Dornburg says she hopes the initiative will raise awareness about what she calls the “magnitude of the tragedy.” “There are no official figures, in part because they have been hidden. We need to start a new debate based on this information to decide what we’re going to do about all this.”