Rent gaps in the Spanish Crisis

Rent seeking is central to processes of financialisation and crisis formtation, not least in tourism economies. Rent seeking involves the making and taking of rent gaps geared to expand unearned incomes in the form of interest revenues from debt and rental revenues from property. Changes in built environments become increasingly determined by where rent gaps can be created and appropriated, rather than as outcomes of conflict-laden, democratic, use-value oriented decision-making. In this paper we address the role of creating and appropriating rent gaps in the formation of the Spanish crisis. The normative gist of the paper is to ask: How might we go about making rent gap theory not true? The analysis highlights four key dimensions: commodification vs commons; social polarization; financialization vs democracy; and ideology underlying political, legal and institutional change.