When the traumatologist Mònica Pèlach left Girona to go to work at the cross-border hospital in La Cerdanya, in November 2022, she did not think that it would be so difficult for her to find a house to rent. The little music I heard was always the same. “We don’t have anything to rent for the whole year, only seasonal sales or rentals”, they told the ten real estate agents he contacted. Three months after starting this journey, the flute was played and they were offered a house in Llívia for which she and her partner pay 1,200 euros a month. “It was actually the only rental house we found, we had no alternatives,” explains Mònica, who is currently on maternity leave. The family feels very comfortable in the house, but they continue to search. “We live in a very expensive region for the few services it offers, many prices are focused on tourism”, says Jordi, his colleague.
Like Mònica, other workers at the Puigcerdà hospital have experienced the problems of living in a region with a shortage of long-term rental housing. Mònica explains the case of a colleague, from Mallorca, who has only found a roof where she can live until November, when they will evict her to make way for ski tourism. In order to respond to the lowest rung of the health sector – the student trainees –, the Puigcerdà Hospital Foundation has enabled a CAP floor where they can stay and a flat in the old teachers’ building.
The escalation of prices, added to the rise of flats for tourist use, which have multiplied by 100 in a decade, the enormous weight of second residences (63.3% of the homes in the region are not mains) and the fact that owners prefer to rent seasonally rather than year-round, has made finding a roofer a pipe dream. “Most owners opt for seasonal rentals because for a few months they charge the same as for a long-term rental, there is less wear and tear on the property and arrears are non-existent”, says Enric Quílez, president of the Research Group of the Cerdanya
This pressure means that many workers choose to live in nearby regions such as Berguedà, Alt Urgell or Alta Cerdanya, areas where prices are also rising due to high demand. Nathan Garcia, who had lived in the region, now travels 50 km every day to go from Sant Corneli de Cercs (Berguedà), where he lives, to Bolvir, where the company where he works is based. “La Cerdanya, which has turned tourism into its economic engine, has become an uninhabitable place”. “If you have to spend 800 or 900 euros on rent, the numbers don’t come out anywhere”, he adds, and says that for years they haven’t filled all the positions of ski instructors because the workers no longer think about coming for the season .
Master Lluís Lupión has also left Cerdanya due to the rent increase. After living in flats of 30 or 40 square meters for which they paid 700 euros a month, he and his wife bought a house in Sallent (Bages) and put an end to their working stage in the Pyrenees region, which it started in 2018. He worked in a school as a part-time music teacher and she in the service sector. “La Cerdanya only wants people with a high purchasing power to live there from Friday to Sunday”, says Lupión, who regrets that as a result of covid there was no paradigm shift. “It continues to be a county of many cranes, many closed windows and very few people living there”, he laments.
