Sostre Cívic, Catalonia’s largest cooperative for use-right housing, has been awarded the 2025 European Social Economy Award in Housing. Founded in 2004, it provides affordable, indefinite-use homes while preventing speculation and fostering community participation.
The cooperative has more than 2,100 members and manages over 550 homes across Catalonia. Its projects rely on public land use agreements, the recovery of private heritage, and active community participation. Currently, Sostre Cívic manages 25 projects, with 14 already in operation, representing over 500 homes in municipalities including Barcelona, Manresa, Lleida, Terrassa, Granollers, Sant Cugat del Vallès, Vilafranca, and Palamós.
The award recognizes Sostre Cívic’s pioneering work promoting sustainable, affordable cooperative housing. Its candidacy was selected from over 100 initiatives across Europe in the first edition of the award to include a dedicated housing category. The other finalists were BrusselsCLT, a community land trust in Brussels, Belgium, and WOGEBE, a housing cooperative in Germany. The jury highlighted that Sostre Cívic “is transforming access to housing in Catalonia with a cooperative model that provides safe, ecological, and affordable homes, empowering residents and promoting regulatory change.”
This is the fourth international recognition the cooperative has received in recent years. In 2023, it won the United Nations Housing Silver Award and the European Commission Social Innovation Award, and in June 2025, it received the European Responsible Housing Awards in Dublin, the highest European recognition for social housing initiatives, organized by Housing Europe, the European Commission, and the International Union of Tenants.
The award was presented during the European Social Economy Week, organized annually by Social Economy Europe, which represents over 2,000 entities from 14 EU countries and promotes policies based on solidarity, inclusion, sustainability, and economic democracy. At the event, Sostre Cívic representatives met with Yolanda Díaz, Second Vice President of Spain and Minister of Labour and Social Economy, and Roxana Mînzatu, Vice President of the European Commission responsible for social economy, to discuss the impact of cooperative housing and the Catalan sector’s engagement in shaping EU housing policy.
Both Sostre Cívic and the housing sector of the Xarxa d’Economia Solidària (XES) in Catalonia, members of REAS Vivienda, were recognized in June 2025 as full members of Housing Europe, the main European federation of social and cooperative housing entities, strengthening their role as key interlocutors in European housing debates.
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