Vaz, Céline

From a Housing Crisis to an Urban Problem - 2015.


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This article examines housing policies throughout Franco’s regime. The government’s housing intervention seemed to demonstrate the regime’s ability to solve economic and social problems, and thus to perpetuate itself otherwise than through force. Housing assistance policies did allow for the construction of millions of dwellings and widespread access to property, which symbolised the economic miracle of the “Desarrollismo” (developmentalism) of the 1960s and 1970s. However, Franco’s urban policies created unequal and low-quality cities. Consequently, instead of increasing social support for the regime, housing polices provoked social protest starting at the end of the 1960s.