Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez lashed out at Jeff Bezos after the Amazon.Com founder weighed into Spain’s increasingly heated debate over the cost of housing.
Bezos had last weekend backed criticism of Sánchez for not doing enough to increase the supply of new homes as his government welcomed more than 3 million migrants into Spain.
“I wonder why these oligarchs take positions on debates that are somewhat removed from them,” Sánchez said in an interview with El Diario, his first since calling elections on Monday. “It’s not just that they live in penthouses, these people want to live on Mars.”
With polls suggesting Sánchez is heading for defeat on Nov. 29, the prime minister’s strategy for reelection hinges on persuading voters that he can do more to increase the affordability of housing than the right wing opposition. He called the election after failing to pass legislation to curb rents and protect tenants in a bid to portray himself an advocate for those struggling to afford homes
Bezos joined the debate in response to a post on X from the celebrity chef José Andrés, who argued that the government should be doing more to spur housebuilding rather than imposing price controls.
“The government isn’t doing what’s necessary. It prefers to intervene on the few homes that exist rather than create the conditions for there to be many more,” Andrés wrote on X. “Less propaganda. Less patches. Less obsession with intervening on the same apartment. More supply. More construction. More homes.”
100% correct diagnosis and prescription. And it’s not just in Spain. https://t.co/nDkmcJ7Dwb
— Jeff Bezos (@JeffBezos) October 3, 2026
The cost of buying or renting homes in Spain has soared during Sánchez’s eight years in office, partly due to controls on construction imposed after the housing bust that hammered the country in 2008. The mismatch between supply and demand has been exacerbated by the Socialist prime minister’s immigration policy, which has helped to make Spain’s economy one of the best performing in Europe, even as it worsened issues of affordability.
The issue has dominated headlines in the past few weeks, following the eviction of Maricarmen Abascal, an 87-year-old woman, who had lived in a rent-controlled apartment for some 70 years. Abascal died Wednesday, bringing thousands of people onto the streets in Madrid.
Sánchez argued that Bezos is more concerned with rules the government has imposed on data center developers than the plight of families struggling to pay rent.
“Jeff Bezos might not like the regulations we have proposed for data centers, requiring them to use renewable energy so that household electricity prices don’t rise, to manage water efficiently, and to ensure that Spain has sovereignty over its data,” he said. “But that’s what a democratic government is for.”