# A national neighbourhood plan for Spain with ten years of legal certainty

> A radical-centre national neighbourhood plan for Spain would have the state and regions sign agreements with each metropolitan area covering homes, transport and money, as the Netherlands did with Vinex, and lay trunk infrastructure ahead of demand, as Alain Bertaud recommends. Districts would be drawn on Jane Jacobs's lines, with small blocks, mixed uses, many plots and density near stations, with a permanent social housing share and services open from day one. Plots would go to developers by open competition, and a ten-year cross-party law would stop courts voiding approved plans for fixable formal defects, the problem that froze Madrid's eastern districts in 2012.

- URL: https://www.radicalcentre.eu/en/articles/national-neighbourhood-plan-spain-ten-years-legal-certainty
- Language: en
- Publisher: radical centre / centro radical
- Published: 2026-10-28
- Topic: Housing
- Author: radical centre
- Licence: CC BY 4.0

## Key points

- Democracia 21 proposes a national plan to build neighbourhoods, with cross-party agreements giving legal certainty for ten years; its launch coverage gives no further detail.
- Madrid's 1997 plan for Valdebebas, Valdecarros and other eastern districts was annulled in stages by the courts between 2003 and 2012, even where building permits had already been granted.
- The Dutch Vinex programme agreed homes, job sites and public transport funding with city regions and provinces, and added 680,000 homes in 1995–2005, 105% of its target.
- The state's part is trunk infrastructure laid ahead of demand; inside each district, small blocks, mixed uses, many plots and density near stations.
- A ten-year cross-party law would let courts order formal defects fixed within a deadline while leaving the substance of plans fully open to challenge.

Among the housing measures Miriam González announced at the launch of Democracia 21 in Madrid on 10 October was a national plan to build neighbourhoods, resting on cross-party agreements that would give legal certainty for ten years. Infobae's report of the speech adds no more detail than that. It is problem 7 in our [overview of the speech](/en/articles/democracia-21-miriam-gonzalez-proposals-radical-centre), and probably the most ambitious of the ten, because it asks Spain to do something it has found very hard for decades: plan whole new districts and then actually finish them.

Here is a sketch of a radical-centre version, using three books from this week's reading list (Edward Glaeser's *Triumph of the City*, Jane Jacobs's *The Death and Life of Great American Cities* and Alain Bertaud's *Order without Design*) and one Dutch precedent.

## Why ten years matters in Spain

Madrid makes the case better than any argument. Its 1997 general plan marked out large new districts to the east: Valdebebas, Valdecarros, Los Berrocales, Los Ahijones, Los Cerros. In 2003 the region's high court annulled the classification of 28 areas because the plan had failed to justify turning protected rural land into land for building. The Supreme Court largely confirmed that in 2007. The city tried to repair it with a report, approved without public consultation, which the regional government endorsed in January 2008. Then, on 28 September 2012, two Supreme Court rulings annulled the repair as well, on the ground that a provision already declared void cannot be validated after the event, as the law firm Garrigues summarised them at the time. By then Valdebebas had partial plans, compensation boards, urbanisation projects and building permits. Everything downstream of the plan was caught.

Fifteen years from approval to legal limbo, over justification and procedure. Our explainers on [developable land](/en/articles/developable-land-spain-why-it-does-not-get-developed) and [Spain's Land Law](/en/articles/what-is-spains-land-law-why-reform-stalled) describe the wider pattern, and the attempts since 2024 to stop fixable formal defects from voiding whole plans, which keep failing in Congress. A promise of ten years of legal certainty speaks directly to this. It works only if the certainty is written into law with enough support to outlast a change of government.

## What the Dutch did with Vinex

The closest European precedent for a national neighbourhood plan is the Dutch Vinex programme. In a January 2007 letter to parliament, the Dutch housing and planning minister took stock. For 1995–2005 the state had signed integrated agreements with seven city-region authorities and eleven provinces, covering net new housing, sites for jobs, the financing and delivery of public transport projects and green links. The target was about 650,000 homes. The stock grew by 680,000, 105% of the target. The city regions themselves fell 43,000 short, and only 27% of new building went inside existing built-up areas, against a goal of 33%. Planning assumed about 33 homes per hectare in the Randstad.

Vinex shows that a national plan with signed agreements between levels of government, and money for transport attached, can deliver homes in volume on schedule. It also shows that a plan delivers what it draws. Vinex districts were planned at modest suburban densities, and that is what the Netherlands got.

## The radical-centre version

Start at the scale of the metropolis, with Bertaud. Asked in a 2015 interview with Market Urbanism what planners should do about infrastructure, he said to plan road development to ensure a steady supply of land and to reduce travel time, and he called designing a city as a finished product from the start a terrible mistake. The state's part of a neighbourhood plan is therefore the trunk: the roads, commuter rail, water and sewers that turn rural land within reach of jobs into serviced land, laid ahead of demand in the metropolitan areas where prices show homes are short. That is public leadership in its most literal sense, and it is work the private developer of a single sector can't do.

Inside each district, Jacobs. Her book named four conditions that generate diversity in a city district, which Michael Taylor's review in the San Antonio Report sets out clearly: primary uses mixed so that streets are busy at different hours, short blocks, buildings of different ages, and enough density of people. A plan can supply three of these on day one. It draws small blocks and plenty of streets, it zones for homes, shops, workshops and offices on the same streets, and it allows density. The fourth, a mix of ages, it can only prepare for, by dividing the land into many plots built by many hands over several years, instead of handing a whole sector to one developer who finishes it at once.

Glaeser adds height. In *Triumph of the City* he argues against limits on dense development, and, according to Richard Ocejo's review in Metropolitics, he proposes that developers pay fees for the real costs of extra height, such as lost light and views, in place of caps. For a Spanish plan that means density floors around stations and charges for the costs that height genuinely imposes on neighbours.

Then the deal that holds it together. From the left, the plan builds public services in from day one, with the school, the health centre and the station opening as the first residents arrive, and it reserves a fixed share of every district for permanent social and affordable rental, owned by public or limited-profit landlords and never sold off. From the market-liberal tradition comes legal certainty plus competition: rules fixed for ten years, plots awarded by open competition on price and quality, as Vienna does with its [developer competitions](/en/articles/vienna-model-social-housing-middle-class), and private capital building most of the homes.

The piece that belongs to neither camp is the pact itself. A ten-year cross-party law, passed by a broad majority, would protect approved neighbourhood plans from total annulment over formal defects. When a court finds a procedural error, it orders the error corrected within a deadline, and the plan stands while that happens. The substance of a plan, including the protection of land that deserves it, stays fully open to challenge. Versions of this rule have been drafted before and have fallen in Congress, as our Land Law explainer sets out. A national neighbourhood plan gives the parties a concrete reason to pass it together, and a fixed horizon of ten years, reviewed at the end, makes it easier to accept, in the spirit of the [Toledo Pact on pensions](/en/articles/toledo-pact-spain-pensions-grand-bargain).

In practice that means Vinex-style agreements between the state, the regions and each metropolitan area, with homes, transport and money in the same signed document. Trunk infrastructure goes in first. Districts are drawn as Jacobs would recognise them, with height allowed near transport, plots tendered in batches, a social share that never leaves public hands and a clinic open before the last crane leaves. The first real test for any party that signs up to it is whether it will vote for the procedural fix when its rivals are the ones proposing it.

## FAQ

### What is Democracia 21's national neighbourhood plan?

One of the housing measures Miriam González announced at the party's launch on 10 October 2026: a national plan to build neighbourhoods, based on cross-party agreements that guarantee legal certainty for ten years. The launch coverage gives no further detail on how it would work.

### Why are general urban plans annulled in Spain?

Courts can declare a whole plan void for defects in its procedure or justification, and everything that depends on it falls too. In Madrid, rulings from 2003 to 2012 annulled the classification of several eastern districts because the plan had not justified developing protected rural land, and a later fix approved without public consultation was struck down as well.

### What was the Vinex programme in the Netherlands?

A national urban expansion policy for 1995–2005. The state signed agreements with seven city-region authorities and eleven provinces covering new homes, job sites, public transport funding and green links. The housing stock grew by 680,000 homes, 105% of the target of about 650,000.

### What would a radical-centre neighbourhood plan include?

Trunk infrastructure built ahead of demand, districts on small blocks with mixed uses and many plots, density allowed near transport, a permanent social housing share, services from day one, open competition for plots, and a ten-year cross-party law that lets formal defects in plans be fixed without voiding them.

## Sources

- [Democracia 21, el nuevo partido de Miriam González que busca romper los dos bloques férreos del bipartidismo](https://www.infobae.com/espana/2026/10/10/democracia-21-el-nuevo-partido-de-miriam-gonzalez-que-busca-romper-los-dos-bloques-ferreos-del-bipartidismo-se-presenta-a-las-generales-del-29n-por-madrid-y-barcelona/), Infobae (2026)
- [Nulidad declarada por sentencias del Tribunal Supremo de determinados sectores del Plan General de Madrid](https://www.garrigues.com/es_ES/noticia/nulidad-declarada-por-sentencias-del-tribunal-supremo-de-determinados-sectores-del-plan), Garrigues (2012)
- [Verstedelijkingsbeleid tot 2010 (Kamerstuk 27562, nr. 10)](https://zoek.officielebekendmakingen.nl/kst-27562-10.html), Ministerie van VROM, Tweede Kamer (2007)
- [Interview with Alain Bertaud](https://marketurbanism.com/?p=4225), Market Urbanism (2015)
- [Book review: The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs](https://sanantonioreport.org/book-review-the-death-and-life-of-great-american-cities-by-jane-jacobs/), San Antonio Report (2013)
- [The Triumph of Density and the Defeat of Preservation](https://metropolitics.org/The-Triumph-of-Density-and-the.html), Metropolitics (2011)