After RENFE was declared a construction company in 1944, it was eligible for the benefits derived from the 1939 law for the public financing of the construction of housing for its employees. RENFE approved a plan for 4,000 units. The overall estimated price of this construction was 112 million. Under the 1939 law, the INP could grant a loan of PTA 56 million (50%) of the total. The Board of Directors (BO) of RENFE approved this agreement at the meeting of 30 October 1945.
The process was set in motion with some urgency, given the demands that were arriving for the construction of housing for employees from different cities and neighbourhoods with a strong railway tradition, where the railway workers were in a rather precarious situation or had to live far from the work sites. Thus, the company’s annual report for 1945 states that, in order to facilitate the procedures, RENFE would advance the amounts financed by both the “National welfare institute” (INP) and the “National Housing institute” (INV), which would cover up to 90% of the construction costs. These amounts would be recovered later as the building certificates were presented to the INV.
At that time, however, the company was facing a serious legal problem, as most of the land that was intended for the housing construction was not legally registered, as the nationalization process was still taking place in the offices, pending the final price of the rescue, and many of the lands were not deeded. However, in order to access loans and benefits from the legislation, the situation had to be regularised before a notary and the respective property deeds had to be presented when the loans were formalised.
From April 1946, loans were signed for the construction of the homes in Zaragoza-Campo del Sepulcro (131 homes), Seville-San Bernardo (40) and Valladolid-Campo Grande (112). In total, the loan to be received for these works, half of the total protected budget, amounted to 6.07 million pesetas, but there were other projects underway. The RENFE directors considered that the four-year limit they had for approving the projects and starting work from the time the INP global loan was granted could not be met, so they considered extending the deadlines. It was finally decided to maintain the four-year deadline, but from then on each new project would be processed as a new loan application.
As far as we know, the start of the work was almost immediate, although the difficulties in the supply of materials, in the middle of an autarchic recession, forced the work in Zaragoza to be stopped “due to the lack of iron needed for the construction”. In 1947 the works in León (110) and Salamanca (88), which had managed to overcome all the existing obstacles, were added to the accounts of the initial loan. We have to take into account that in all cases the land was very close to the passenger building at the station, and therefore there were no problems with the ownership of the land, making the administrative process easier. It should also be noted that given the size of the work and the extent of the projects, fire insurance policies were taken out with General Española de Seguros SA to cover the work carried out.
The supply problems passed from Zaragoza to other cities and in 1948, when a large part of the construction work was due to be finished, many of the works were paralysed and, as RENFE recognised, “the difficulty encountered by the contractors in the collection of materials for the constructions that had been started, made it impossible to finish any of them…”. It seems that in order to overcome the problems and limitations, the decision was taken to have RENFE, through the Railway Material Commission, purchase the materials for the construction of the houses directly and then supply them to the contractors.
The activity at this time, however, was significant and up to fifteen works were being developed simultaneously. In addition to the works already mentioned, work had already begun in Madrid-Delicias, Venta de Baños, Palencia, Córdoba-San Cayetano, Córdoba-Avenida América, Oviedo, Irún, Manresa, Monforte de Lemos and Almorchón, and works had also been auctioned in eleven other cities or stations: Santander, Sevilla-Plaza de Armas, Albacete, Algeciras, Aranda de Duero, Vadollano, Guadalajara, Puertollano, Manzanares, Arroyo-Malpartida and Valencia-Alameda.
Finally, in 1949, the first completed buildings were solemnly inaugurated and the keys were handed over to the new residents, who rented them out at a fixed rent of no more than 10% of their income. The group of houses in León, next to the North station, was the first to be handed over, and this was followed in the same year by the houses in Zaragoza, Sevilla-San Bernardo and the first phase in Madrid-Delicias. In addition to the above-mentioned areas, auctions were held for the construction of homes in Tarragona, Mora la Nueva and Puente Genil.
When the year 1950 began, just under 500 homes had been completed and another 800 homes were under construction or being auctioned. In other words, the forecast was far below what had been predicted. In the following months, construction accelerated notably, as there were fewer difficulties in providing materials and in many cases the project drafting and approval phase had been speeded up with a standardisation of the designs. Finally, in 1955, RENFE acknowledged that it had carried out the construction of 2,820 homes, 70% of what had been planned, and the previous year it had begun a new plan to replace this and become a plan of 7,000 homes, which from that moment would be regulated by a 1954 law, for limited income housing. In order to reach these figures, proposals made under the previous law for 1,363 homes were adapted or presented, and projects for a further 2,817 homes were awaited.
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