Spain plans to scrap so-called ‘golden visas’ that allow people from outside the European Union to obtain residency permits if they purchase property with a value of over €500,000.

The Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said the reform to the residency law was part of the government’s push to make housing “a right, not a speculative business”.

The government says some 10,000 such visas have been issued since the measure was introduced in 2013 by the previous right-wing People’s Party (PP) government, in order to attract investors into Spain.

‘Golden visas’ are strongly criticised for spurring property price hikes and speculation in the housing sector. Soaring house prices have long been a major problem for many Spaniards, particularly in the country’s major cities.

‘Housing is a constitutional right and not a mere speculative business. That is why we are going to eliminate the Golden Visa, the law approved by the PP that allows you to obtain a residence visa if you invest more than 500,000 euros in housing in our country,’ said Sánchez. ‘Having decent housing cannot depend only on market rules. This will be the legislature that turns housing into the fifth pillar of the welfare state.’

The Culture Minister Ernest Urtasun, referred to the Spanish ‘golden visa’ as a ‘European disgrace’, saying that ‘it cannot be that someone is given a residence permit for the fact of being rich; this is creating first and second-class citizens’.

According to Sánchez, 94 in every 100 ‘golden visas’ issued were linked to properties bought in popular cities such as Barcelona, ​​Madrid, Málaga, Alicante, Valencia or Palma de Mallorca, where property prices and rents have all risen exponentially.

However people can still access golden visas by invested €1 million in shares in Spanish companies, or €2 million in government bonds, or transferred €1 million to a Spanish bank account.