The CPI remains at 4.9% in October, with food and housing still rising

The Law 12/2023, of May 24, on the right to housing, has already completed its parliamentary processing and has been in force since May 26, 2023. As of November 13, 2026, it is not pending final approval by the Congress or the Senate. There is also no single date for its "full application": some measures are directly applicable, others depend on territorial decisions and long-term objectives.

The parliamentary processing has already concluded

The Council of Ministers approved the bill on February 1, 2022; the Congress approved it on April 27, 2023, and the Senate, definitively, on May 17. The publication in the BOE occurred on May 25, with entry into force the following day. These milestones are recorded in the official explanation from the Government.

Subsequent initiatives to modify it are different procedures, not pending phases of the original law. Among those identified, proposals 122/000178 and 122/000251 were rejected in November 2025 and September 2026, respectively. Their rejection does not delay the entry into force of Law 12/2023.

What schedules does the law establish

It is advisable to separate the deadlines that have already passed from the actions that still depend on each administration. The main reference is the consolidated text in the BOE:

• Tax incentives: January 1, 2024. The second final provision, on reductions in IRPF for housing rental, had a deferred entry into force until that date. Its general activation is not pending, although each benefit requires meeting its requirements.
• Annual rent update. The law tasked the INE with defining, before December 31, 2024, a new indicator to limit updates. This is a mandate whose deadline has already passed, not a condition that keeps the entire law suspended.
• Seasonal rentals. The fifth additional provision set six months to establish a working group: the deadline was November 26, 2023. That mandate was to create the group, not to necessarily approve a new law within six months.
• Review of tensioned zones. The third additional provision foresaw reviewing its criteria three years after entry into force: May 26, 2026. The expiration of that deadline does not mean that the zones are declared automatically.

What still depends on the territory and the contract

The residential market tensioned zones —areas with special difficulties accessing housing— require a declaration by the competent administration. There is no state deadline obliging all autonomous communities to declare them. Each declaration lasts three years, extendable annually, and allows activating certain rent limitations.

Additionally, the fourth transitional provision maintains, as a general rule, the previous regime for contracts signed before the law, without prejudice to applicable extraordinary measures. Therefore, the contract date and the property's location are decisive.

For social housing, the second transitional provision establishes, in the absence of specific territorial goals after the first year, a reference of twenty years to reach a stock equivalent to 20% of households in municipalities declared tensioned. This is a public policy objective, not the deadline for tenant rights to come into force.

Finally, the constitutional rulings of 2024 and 2025 annulled certain provisions, including procedural requirements. They should not be treated as pending measures for application. The practical conclusion is clear: parliamentary approval ended; what must now be verified is which provision remains in force and what territorial actions it requires.

The National Institute of Statistics (INE) has as its main mission to produce and disseminate official statistics on the economic, demographic, and social reality of Spain, as well as to coordinate the statistical activity of the General State Administration. Its current president is Elena Manzanera Díaz. It is an autonomous body attached to the Ministry of Economy, Commerce and Business, as explained in its institutional documentation.

Main competencies of the INE

Its responsibilities combine information production, technical coordination, and certain functions related to population and elections. The main ones are as follows:

• Produce and publish official statistics. It carries out the operations entrusted by the National Statistical Plan and disseminates its results. Its activity covers population, economy, employment, living conditions, companies, environment, science, and technology. It includes censuses, national accounts, and economic and social indicators, according to the description of its functions.
• Coordinate state statistics. It exercises general coordination of the statistical services of the General State Administration and the oversight, control, and supervision of their technical competencies. Therefore, it does not produce all public statistics alone: it also coordinates the work of other bodies that produce them. This function is included in the agreement published in the BOE.
• Prepare statistical planning. It drafts the preliminary project of the National Statistical Plan and its annual programs, in collaboration with the statistical services of ministries and other public entities. The Plan determines the statistics for state purposes to be produced over four years; the annual programs specify the actions for each fiscal year. Its approval corresponds to the Government by royal decree, not the INE alone.
• Establish common technical criteria. It proposes concepts, statistical units, classifications, and codes so that official statistics are coherent and comparable. It also coordinates and maintains directories of companies and other infrastructures necessary to organize statistical operations and properly understand the productive fabric.
• Develop registry and electoral functions. It intervenes in the coordination of the continuous Register in collaboration with local entities. Additionally, the Electoral Census Office, integrated within the INE, prepares and manages the electoral census according to electoral legislation. These responsibilities differ from survey production, although they also require maintaining updated population information.
• Cooperate with other administrations and international organizations. It collaborates with autonomous communities and with Eurostat and other international statistical organizations. This cooperation facilitates that Spanish data can be integrated and compared with those of other countries. The full scope of its activities can be consulted on the official INE portal.

In practical terms, these competencies allow providing information to design and evaluate public policies, conduct research, and guide decisions of companies and citizens. The body thus combines a function of producing statistics with another of coordinating the state statistical system.

Who currently holds the Presidency

Elena Manzanera Díaz presides over the INE. She was appointed by Royal Decree 687/2022, of August 1, an appointment expressly recorded in an agreement published in the BOE. Her continuity in office also appears in the information from Demócrata of October 14, 2026.

She holds a degree in Economic and Business Sciences from the University of Seville and developed her career in Andalusian public statistics. As president, she legally represents the Institute, supervises its units, and ensures compliance with the National Statistical Plan. She also directs the Electoral Census Office and chairs various statistical coordination and registry bodies, according to the Presidency information.

The reference index for the annual rent update must be applied within the legal regime of the contract and as a limit to the rent revision, not as an automatic increase. The Housing Law distinguishes this mechanism from the system that limits the initial price of certain contracts in tensioned zones: their requirements are not the same.

1. Identify which index is being applied

The first final provision, section five, of the Law 12/2023, on Housing incorporated an eleventh additional provision to the Urban Leases Law. Its mandate is as follows:

"The National Institute of Statistics will define, before December 31, 2024, a reference index for the annual update of housing lease contracts that will be set as a reference limit for the purposes of article 18 of this law, with the aim of avoiding disproportionate increases in the rent of lease contracts."

Therefore, the mechanism refers to annual revisions of an existing rent. It does not serve to determine, by itself, how much the owner can charge when signing a new lease.

2. Check the regime and date of the contract

The Housing Law came into force on May 26, 2023. Its fourth transitional provision establishes that contracts entered into previously "will continue to be governed by the legal regime that applied to them."

This requires distinguishing two situations:

• Contracts prior to that date: are not automatically subject to the new regime merely because a new year arrives.
• Agreed adaptation: the parties may adapt a pre-existing contract to the Housing Law regime, provided they agree and do not contradict legal provisions.

Additionally, the law maintains the application of extraordinary measures on rent updates as provided for each one. These temporary limitations should not be confused with the new index.

3. That a proper update exists

The index operates as a reference limit for the update regulated in article 18 of the Urban Leases Law. Its existence does not create, by itself, an independent right to increase the rent: it must be verified that the revision corresponds according to the contract and its applicable regulations.

It also does not mean that the entire percentage of the index must necessarily be applied. The function attributed to it by the Housing Law is to avoid disproportionate increases, not to impose a minimum increase nor to simply replace any contractual condition.

4. It does not require a tensioned zone nor a large landlord

The legal mandate on the annual update index does not condition its application on the housing being in a declared tensioned zone nor on the owner being a large landlord. Those conditions belong to another mechanism: the limits on the initial rent of article 17.7.

In this second system, a valid declaration of a tensioned zone and, generally, that the lessor is a large landlord are required. It may also apply to housing without a lease contract in the previous five years, when so provided by the corresponding ministerial resolution.

In conclusion: to revise a rent, the temporal regime of the contract, that the update is proper, and the applicable limit must be verified. The Housing Law establishes the mandate to create the index; the deadline set for the INE should not be confused with an automatic application date to all contracts.