The exorbitant prices of real estate make it practically impossible for the majority of the population, especially young people, to start or maintain a life project. It is not just about having a roof over one’s head; other dimensions of life, including the formation of a family, are put on hold. This serious problem reflects the low level of real wages in Spain, probably below what could be called a subsistence wage.
Classical economists argued that the dynamics of the capitalist market led inexorably to the maintenance of working-class wages at a level close to subsistence. Figures such as Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Thomas Malthus, and Karl Marx believed in this idea so strongly that it became known as the “brazen law of wages.”
