Spain

Madrid's grip on short lets slipped first in court. On 21 May judgment STS 620/2026 of the Tribunal Supremo struck down the single national registration number, moving registers to the 17 autonomous communities while civil lease law stays with the foral regions.

Deputies then threw out both new housing decree-laws on 2 October: the seasonal-rental rule by 172 votes to 178, and the five-year lease-renewal rule, seven years for corporate landlords, by 166 to 184. Junts joined the Partido Popular and Vox against both. Demand keeps rising meanwhile. INE counted 12.3m foreign tourists in August, up 9.2%, with those staying mainly in rented homes up 13.7% and hotel guests up 6.6%.

Spain won the 2026 World Cup on 19 July, beating Argentina 1-0 after extra time at MetLife Stadium. Substitute Ferran Torres scored in the 106th minute, and Argentina managed no shot on target until extra time. Spain had reached its first semi-final since 2010 by beating Belgium 2-1 on 10 July, and the title is its second, after 2010.

The state marked the win the next day. King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia received the squad at the Palacio de la Zarzuela on 20 July, with Princess Leonor and Infanta Sofía alongside them, and the football federation's delegation was led by its president, Rafael Louzán.

Spain hosts what unions called Europe's first completed AI-attributed collective redundancy: 80 jobs at Concentrix's A Coruña site, agreed in July 2026. On 6 August the works committee said the loss of a further client contract could double the cuts to 160.

Unions then took the argument into fiscal policy. On 21 September CCOO economist Fernando Rocha and academics from the universities of Granada and Valencia proposed setting Spanish corporate tax rates by how many people a company employs. They tied the idea to the social-security base, which raised €109.9bn from 22.3 million contributors between January and July 2026.