A 1950s cartoon by Rafael Azcona captures the housing pressure that remains familiar in Spain: two builders raise towers with a roof at stomach height as a family asks whether the flats are for rent. The cartoon is the starting point for Madrid's centenary exhibition on Azcona, who would have turned 100 on October 23. The problems he wrote and drew about remain easy to spot in 2026: homes that are hard to access, with shops closing and public transport crowded. Residents also protest noise or pollution beside the "playa de Madrid".
The Bank of Spain has put Spain's housing shortfall at roughly 550,000 to 750,000 homes. Some 2026 estimates say the gap could pass 1 million homes by 2028. The figures explain why an old Azcona cartoon still feels close to the present.
The exhibition fills two corridors and a small cinema fitted with seats from the Coliseum. Visitors can watch Rafael Azcona, dos o tres cosas que sabemos de él, a 35-minute audiovisual work. David Trueba uses scenes from Azcona's films to explain his place in Spanish culture.
Azcona wrote more than 100 screenplays and became one of the most influential screenwriters in Spanish cinema. His credits include Luis García Berlanga's satires Plácido (1961) and La escopeta nacional (1978), along with José Luis Cuerda's El bosque animado (1987). He also wrote Fernando Trueba's Oscar-winning Belle Époque (1992) and two spaghetti westerns.
His work went beyond those films. The exhibition presents him as a humorist and novelist, alongside his work as an artist and poet; he was a native of Logroño. Sixteen original booklets from 1951 show his writing. The display also recalls his brief experience as a bullfighter.
Curator Bernardo Sánchez Salas cuts through the many labels. For him, Azcona was above all a narrator.
That narrator looked at society from below. He wrote about the clash between love and partnership. He also traced the divide between rich and poor, and the power of strong people over those pushed down. He held a controversial view of existential despair, in which death was its logical endpoint.
These were not passing interests but unresolved conflicts that gave his work its bleak clarity.
Housing makes the connection especially clear. Around 150 tents remained in Madrid's Puerta del Sol during a recent housing protest, as a recent housing camp kept evictions and access to homes in public view.
The protests grew in late September 2026. The eviction case of an 87-year-old woman became a rallying point, with reports from AP and AFP alongside coverage by DW. Azcona's cartoon does not explain those demonstrations; it gives the current dispute an earlier face.
Spain's house-price index rose 12.2% year on year in the second quarter of 2026, information from the National Statistics Institute. Prices for existing homes rose 12.9%, while new homes rose 7.4%.
Rent has climbed too. Idealista put Spain's average asking rent at €15.1 per square metre in August 2026. CNN reported, citing Idealista, that rents in Madrid had nearly doubled over the previous 10 years.
In 2025, around 240,000 to 245,000 new households formed in Spain, information from figures cited from the Bank of Spain. Only about 92,000 homes were completed.
The shortage also reaches public construction contracts. An Infobae analysis found that 129 housing tenders received no bids in 2026. Its yearly data listed 149 tenders and 255 lots without a contractor, including 128 lots that were not awarded.
The centenary programme will include a restored version of El verdugo (1963), directed by Luis García Berlanga. Sala Berlanga will screen it on Azcona's birthday as part of a cycle of eight films.
David Trueba will lead two round tables at SGAE, scheduled for October 19 and 26, with actors and directors who knew Azcona.
Trueba remembers Azcona as an optimist. He believed society was improving, even when it sometimes showed its claws. Trueba's description of progress producing a brutal reaction captures the tension in the exhibition.
Azcona turned housing shortages and class pressure into stories that also made sense of daily absurdity, without much explanation. The exhibition presents his pessimism as an active way of seeing: it faced reality without giving up the humour needed to keep going.
