With sales slumping, prices faltering and property developers despondent, Spain’s housing market evidently failed to get the soft landing in 2007 that the government and experts had predicted at the start of year.

Some experts are alarmist, some cautiously optimistic, but all agree that the sector is in crisis.

The issue is all the more important as the housing market makes up 7.5 percent of gross domestic product, according to figures from the BBVA bank. The construction industry as a whole employs 13 percent of workers.

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