Madrid's housing decrees fall, the bay's asking prices slip, Girona province sets a record.

1. Rates and mortgages

The Banco de España published the official 12-month Euribor for September 2026 on 1 October: 3.247%, 1.075 points above September 2025 (2.172%) and up from 2.954% in August. Our first edition used the provisional 3.243% circulating on 30 September; the official series is the one that resets Spanish variable mortgages, so 3.247% is the figure for the October revisions. Daily fixings eased into the new month: 3.356% on 28 September, 3.362% on the 29th, 3.329% on the 30th and 3.303% on 1 October, the first day of the October average.

Eurostat's flash estimate of 2 October put euro-area inflation at 3.8% in September, up from 3.2% in August and the highest in three years; energy rose 18.8% year on year (14.3% in August) and core inflation was 2.5%. Spain's harmonised rate was 5.0%, consistent with the INE's 4.9% CPI flash of 29 September. The ECB's rates are unchanged since 16 September (deposit facility 2.50%, main refinancing 2.65%, marginal lending 2.90%); the next decision is on 29 October, an interim meeting without projections, and the question in the market is whether the 3.8% print forces a third rise of the year to 2.75%. The account of the 10 September meeting is due on 8 October.

Published offers for well-qualified borrowers; TAE generally assumes the bank's linked products and, for variable and mixed loans, the current Euribor, which is why the variable TAEs rose this week with no change to the spreads. HelpMyCash notes that a number of banks are still raising fixed rates.

On a 300,000 € loan over 25 years the monthly payment is 1,286 € at the best fixed 2.10%, 1,384 € at 2.75%, and 1,509 € on the best variable (Euribor + 0.30) at the official September average, about 168 € a month more than at last year's reset. The gap between the best fixed and the best variable is about 223 € a month.

2. Prices and inventory

idealista's September report, published on 1 October, is the first local price release since our baseline edition and it moved. Castell-Platja d'Aro is at 4,026 €/m², −1.2% on the month, −0.9% on the quarter and +3.9% on the year; a month earlier the annual rate was +7.1%. Sant Feliu de Guíxols is at 3,315 €/m², +0.2% on the month, −1.2% on the quarter and +6.9% on the year. The province moved the other way: Girona reached 2,934 €/m², +0.7% on the month and +9.9% on the year, a new all-time high above the May 2007 peak of 2,918 €/m², and Catalonia 3,092 €/m² (+12.2% y/y), still 1.7% below its own 2007 maximum.

Asking prices of homes advertised on idealista, September 2026 report. The two municipalities we cover are the only ones on this list with a negative quarter.

RealAdvisor's October model, which blends listings, closed sales and registry data, gives Castell-Platja d'Aro 4,467 €/m² (apartments 4,627 €/m², +10.9% in a year; houses 4,054 €/m², +6.4%), slightly below its September reading of 4,480 €/m², and Sant Feliu de Guíxols 3,322 €/m² (apartments 3,257 €/m², +11.2%; houses 3,456 €/m², +7.6%). The models still show double-digit annual growth for apartments because they lag the portals by a quarter or two.

Emerald snapshot of habitaclia, 5 October 2026 (1,537 listing cards): asking prices; medians by property type; totals are the portal's counts. Change in brackets is since the 1 October snapshot. New-build: 84 listings (Platja d'Aro 59, Castell d'Aro 12, S'Agaró 8, Sant Feliu 5), unchanged.

Our habitaclia snapshot of 5 October counts 1,537 homes for sale across the four towns, the same total as on 1 October, with Platja d'Aro up 8 and S'Agaró and Sant Feliu down 4 each; long-term rentals fell from 93 to 88 (S'Agaró −2, Sant Feliu −3), so there are now 17 homes for sale for every one to let. Medians are unchanged except the Platja d'Aro apartment, 392,500 € (−0.6%). On the rental side idealista's September index puts Castell-Platja d'Aro at 21.1 €/m² a month, +9.2% on the month and +13.8% on the year, while the province fell 3.1% to 13.9 €/m² as summer lets left the market; the bay's long-term rents are rising because the stock is leaving, not because demand is new.

3. Transactions and demand

The INE's July transactions statistics (ETDP, published 25 September) count 61,417 home sales in Spain, −5.1% on July 2025: 13,289 new homes (21.6%, −1.4%) and 48,128 second-hand (78.4%, −6.1%); 57,607 free-market homes (−4.4%) and 3,810 protected (−14.4%). Total property transfers were 205,870, −1.8%. The fall matches the Registradores' second-quarter reading of −2.3% year on year that we reported last week; the August figure is due on 19 October and the August mortgage statistics on 26 October.

Demand on the bay remains foreign and European: the Registradores' Q2 data (25.48% foreign buyers in Girona province, 17.63% in Catalonia, 15.98% nationally) are the latest available and will not be updated until the Q3 release in November. The derogated RDL 26/2026 contained nothing on foreign or non-resident buyers; the separate proposal for a 100% tax on non-EU non-resident purchases remains stalled in Congress.

4. Regulation and policy

• Housing decrees repealed. Real Decreto-ley 26/2026 of 29 September (BOE 30 September, in force 1 October) and Real Decreto-ley 27/2026 (in force 2 October) failed their validation votes in Congress on 2 October, 172–178 and 166–184, with Junts, PP, Vox and UPN against. Both are repealed; measures requested while they were in force (one or two days) are not retroactively erased, but no new rights can be claimed under them.
• What RDL 26/2026 would have done on the bay: (a) seasonal rentals (contratos de temporada) required a documented reason for the tenant's displacement, a term of more than 31 days and normally no more than 12 months, and converted automatically into ordinary residential leases if the reason was missing, with rents in tensioned areas capped by the reference index; (b) room rentals were brought into the LAU with the sum of room rents capped at the whole-dwelling rent; (c) tenants in residential leases got an extraordinary extension of up to two years, ending before 31 December 2028; (d) councils in tensioned areas could surcharge the IBI of tourist-use dwellings by up to 50% (one property), 100% (two or three) and 150% (four or more); (e) from 1 December 2026, furnished lets with hotel-type services or of 30 nights or fewer lost the VAT exemption and were taxed at 10%; (f) acquisitions of homes below 70% of appraisal value by large holders were barred until end-2028 and evictions by large-holder funds suspended to end-2030.
• Sant Feliu de Guíxols is the one municipality on the bay where (a), (d) and the rent caps would have applied together, because its declaration as a tensioned housing area was renewed in August 2026 for a further year; Castell-Platja d'Aro is not declared. The Catalan rules in force are unchanged: rent containment in Sant Feliu on new contracts by reference to the official index, and the regional cap on tourist licences at 10 per 100 inhabitants from November 2028.
• The government had not approved a replacement decree by 4 October. Junts conditioned its support on voluntary extensions with incentives for landlords and faster eviction of squatters; the alternative is an ordinary bill with months of procedure. We will treat any new text as live only once it is in the BOE.
• Local: the Castell-Platja d'Aro council's notices for the week to 5 October contain no housing, licence or planning decisions; the approved text of the Pla Especial Mas Maig (provisional approval 21 September) is still unpublished. Taxes unchanged: ITP 10–13% on second-hand homes; 10% VAT plus 1.5% AJD on new homes.

5. New developments

No change in the private pipeline. Group de Palol's project page, checked on 4 October, lists the same four live schemes at the same prices and dates: Sa Caleta (S'Agaró, 12 beachfront apartments from 2.5 M€, construction complete), Lleida 41 (Platja d'Aro, 18 beachfront apartments from 790,000 €, August 2027), Roma 12 (53 apartments from 370,000 €, August 2027) and Selva I (S'Agaró, 10 townhouses from 1.25 M€, August 2027); Riviera de S'Agaró (35 apartments, summer 2025) is sold out.

On the portals, new-build is 84 listings, 5.8% of the 1,454 sale cards with full data, unchanged on the week. The clusters in our snapshot are the same addresses as on 1 October: Passeig Marítim 100 (14 units, 795,000–1,495,000 €, median 11,287 €/m²), Passeig Marítim 94 (7 units, median 9,280 €/m²), Carrer Lleida 40 (11 units, 680,000–1,160,000 €, median 7,982 €/m²), Carrer de Roma 12 (10 units, 390,000–545,000 €, median 4,771 €/m²) and Les Escoles dels Estanys 52 (8 units, median 6,137 €/m²) in Platja d'Aro; Carrer d'Amadeu Vives 4 in Castell d'Aro (12 units, 235,000–335,000 €, median 3,170 €/m², 10% below the second-hand apartments around it). The Platja d'Aro new-build median of 7,508 €/m² is a 65% premium to second-hand apartments (4,554 €/m²), a point wider than last week because the second-hand median fell.

Public pipeline unchanged: 40 council flats in Platja d'Aro within two years and 70 public rental homes on the former Trachsler plots in Sant Feliu, neither before 2027–28. The full new-developments report is on the Insights page.

6. Deals and capital markets

• Correction to edition 1: Blackstone is not selling Hotel Investment Partners (HIP) privately but preparing its stock-market listing. The plan reported by Hosteltur on 2 September is an IPO on the Spanish exchange between late October and November 2026, with a primary offering of about 700 M€ and a secondary tranche, a portfolio of 61 hotels and some 20,000 rooms in Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece valued near 6 billion euros, Blackstone at 65% and GIC at 35%, and Santander, Morgan Stanley, Citi, BNP Paribas and Goldman Sachs as banks. No intention-to-float announcement had been published by 4 October.
• The third-quarter investment reports from CBRE and Colliers (Spanish real estate and hotel investment to September 2026) are due in the second half of October; we will carry the Catalonia and coastal figures when they are out.
• No institutional residential or hotel transactions were recorded on the bay this week; the market remains one of private sales, mostly below three million euros.

7. Tourism and the local economy

The INE's FRONTUR and EGATUR releases of 2 October closed the summer at a record: 12,256,087 international tourists arrived in Spain in August 2026, +9.2% on August 2025, and spent 17,838 M€ (+9.2%); the first eight months are +5.4% in arrivals. Catalonia received 2.38 million international tourists in August (+9.1%), 19.4% of the national total and second only to the Balearics, who spent 3,332 M€ (+7.2%), an average of 1,400 € per person or 238 € a day over 5.9 nights; January to August the region counts 14.32 million arrivals (+3.9%) and 18.85 billion euros (+11.1%), the largest in Spain.

For the bay this is the denominator of tourist-flat values: a season of record spending with licence numbers frozen until 2028 and, as of Friday, no IBI surcharge and no VAT change. The next test is the Pilar bridge of 10–12 October; the Girona hotel association's September figures and the INE's hotel survey for September (23 October) will show how far the season stretched.

8. Outlook and the week ahead

Base case unchanged from edition 1 with one adjustment: Castell-Platja d'Aro asking prices are now more likely to close 2026 some 2–4% above December 2025 than the 5–8% we gave for the bay as a whole, with Sant Feliu nearer the top of that range; transactions down mid-single digits on 2025; the Euribor between 3.2% and 3.6% into Q1 2027, with the 29 October meeting the swing factor after the 3.8% euro-area print. Policy risk has shifted from 'new rules in December' to 'new rules at an unknown date': the repealed decree is the template for whatever follows. Upside: a Middle-East de-escalation that pulls energy and the Euribor back. Downside: a third ECB rise plus a repeat decree that passes.

Calendar

• Early October: Colegio de Registradores monthly statistics for August 2026 (sales, mortgages).
• 8 October: ECB account of the 10 September monetary policy meeting.
• 10–12 October: Pilar bridge; first autumn occupancy readings for the Costa Brava.
• 14 October: INE final CPI for September; 16 October: Eurostat final euro-area HICP.
• 19 October: INE home sales (ETDP) for August 2026.
• 26 October: INE mortgage statistics for August 2026.
• 29 October: ECB monetary policy decision (no projections); 30 October: INE flash CPI for October.
• 2 November: Banco de España October Euribor average; idealista October price reports.
• November: Registradores Q3 2026 statistics (foreign-buyer shares by province); early December: INE house price index, Q3 2026.
• Pending: any replacement for the repealed housing decrees (BOE); the approved Pla Especial Mas Maig text; HIP intention-to-float; Platja d'Aro housing-plan ordinances.

Sources and data

• Banco de España — 12-month Euribor, September 2026 average 3.247% (1 Oct 2026)
• Banco de España — daily interest rates table (Euribor fixings to 1 Oct 2026)
• Eurostat — euro area flash HICP, September 2026 (2 Oct 2026)
• ECB / Banco de España — decision of 10 September 2026; next meeting 29 October
• HelpMyCash — Mejores hipotecas, updated 5 October 2026
• idealista — sale price report, Girona province and municipalities, September 2026
• idealista — sale price report, Catalonia, September 2026
• idealista — rental price report, Girona province, September 2026
• RealAdvisor — Castell-Platja d'Aro price model, October 2026
• RealAdvisor — Sant Feliu de Guíxols price model, October 2026
• INE — Estadística de Transmisiones de Derechos de la Propiedad, July 2026 (25 Sept 2026)
• INE — FRONTUR / EGATUR, August 2026 (2 Oct 2026)
• INE — release calendar, October 2026
• BOE — Real Decreto-ley 26/2026, de 29 de septiembre (BOE 30 Sept 2026)
• Congreso de los Diputados — votes of 2 October 2026 on RDL 26/2026 and 27/2026 (press coverage: Infobae, Moncloa.com, euribor.com.es)
• Group de Palol — projects page, checked 4 October 2026
• Hosteltur — HIP IPO planned for late October–November 2026 (2 Sept 2026)
• ViaEmpresa — Catalonia international tourism, August 2026 (INE data, 2 Oct 2026)
• El Ridaura — Sant Feliu de Guíxols tensioned-area declaration renewed (5 Aug 2026)
• Ajuntament de Castell-Platja d'Aro — notices, week to 5 October 2026
• Emerald Properties — habitaclia snapshot, 5 October 2026 (1,537 listing cards)

This material is general market information prepared by Emerald Properties from the public sources listed. It is not investment, legal or tax advice and not a valuation of any specific property. Figures are those published by the sources on the dates stated and may be revised; portal snapshots count asking prices, not closed sales.