Spain starts evacuations of Spaniards stranded in Middle East, four in ten homes on sale in Alicante owned by foreigners, Spain’s property prices increase by 20 percent and more news on Wednesday March 4th.
Spain starts evacuations of Spaniards stranded in Middle East
Spain’s Foreign Affairs Minister José Manuel Albares on Tuesday announced the start of evacuation operations for Spaniards stranded in various Middle Eastern countries due to the escalating conflict.
Authorities currently estimate that there are approximately 30,000 Spaniards in the region.
Albares confirmed that an initial group of 175 Spaniards have already departed from Abu Dhabi on a commercial flight that arrived in Madrid on Tuesday afternoon.
He added that several more flights are planned to expedite transfers from the United Arab Emirates, with a stopover in Istanbul.
There are approximately 13,000 Spaniards in the UAE alone, while Iran, where “just over 150” remain, represents “the most difficult situation.”
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Spain’s property prices increase by 20% year-on-year in February
The price of second-hand homes in Spain rose by 1.8 percent month-on-month last February, and by 19.9 percent year-on-year, bringing the average price of Spanish properties in February 2026 to €2,950/m2.
That’s according to the latest data from leading Spanish property portal Fotocasa.
It’s the second month in a row with year-on-year increases of around 20 percent, making homes in Spain around €40,000 more expensive on average than a year ago.
If we calculate this latest monthly increase and multiply it by the 80m2 of a standard home in Spain, we see that the average home price in February 2026 was €235,981.
4 in 10 homes on sale in Alicante owned by foreigners
According to the latest data from Spain’s General Council of Notaries, up to 39.59 percent of the 55,978 homes sold in Alicante province last year belonged to non-Spaniards.
Specifically, 11.73 percent were owned by foreign residents in the area housing the Costa Blanca, while the other 27.86 percent belonged to non-resident second home owners.
The concentration of foreign sellers last year was in the municipality of Orihuela, where a whopping 77 percent of the properties that changed hands were initially owned by foreigners.
EU follows Spain’s lead on teen social media ban
An EU expert group is to begin work this week on whether to ban social media for children with the aim of coming up with recommendations by the summer, Brussels said Tuesday.
European Union chief Ursula von der Leyen will attend the consultative panel’s inaugural meeting on Thursday, having launched the initiative in September, the European Commission said.
Brussels is considering setting a minimum age to access social media after Australia in December required TikTok, YouTube, Snapchat and other top sites to remove accounts held by under-16s, or face heavy fines.
France, along with Denmark, Greece and Spain, has been pushing for similar action at EU level.
With additional reporting by AFP.
