Spain's fixed-rate mortgage market is being propelled again by a rising euríbor, the benchmark interest rate used to price most home loans in the country, which is nearing a 3% monthly average and has already surpassed that level on an intraday basis. Fixed-rate loans are becoming a common refuge for a growing number of new borrowers looking to shield themselves from the increase.
Since mid-2025, fixed-rate loans for home purchases have exceeded 60% of all mortgages signed each month. In May they reached 60.9%, according to Spain's National Statistics Institute (INE).
Financial intermediaries report even higher figures. Gibobs, a mortgage fintech, said 87.81% of the mortgages signed through its platform so far this year were fixed-rate, compared with 9.82% mixed and just 0.20% variable. The company said the figure marks a jump of almost eight points from 2025, when fixed-rate loans already accounted for 80.21% of its signings.
Jorge González-Iglesias Baeza, chief executive of Gibobs.com, said the market had made a clear bet on certainty. He said that with the euríbor climbing again and geopolitical and energy tensions once more pressuring inflation, buyers preferred to lock in their monthly payment for life rather than risk the swings of a variable rate. He added that fixed-rate loans were now also the most competitive option on price, which explained why their advance had not slowed.
Trioteca, another mortgage broker, said more than 90% of the mortgages it intermediated in the first quarter of the year were fixed-rate, a share it said was nearly repeated in the second quarter.
Existing borrowers are switching too
Interest in fixed rates is not limited to new loans. According to Gibobs, 11% of all mortgage signings it managed in 2026 were subrogations, or loan transfers, and of those, 63.79% involved customers leaving a variable or mixed mortgage to switch to a fixed one.
González-Iglesias Baeza said the subrogation figures were the most revealing of all. He said it was not only first-time buyers who preferred fixed rates, but also holders of variable or mixed mortgages who were using the moment to lock in their payment permanently, calling it no longer just a financial decision but a change in mindset.
A U-shaped few years for fixed rates
Fixed-rate mortgages have followed a U-shaped path in Spain in recent years. Their signings peaked in July 2022, when they made up 75.4% of the total. At the time, an inflation surge driven by the sudden, strong recovery in activity after the pandemic, combined with the energy crisis that followed Russia's invasion of Ukraine that February, forced central banks to raise interest rates. That pushed the euríbor sharply higher and made borrowers wary of variable mortgages.
Banks responded to the surge in demand for fixed-rate loans by raising their price, which caused the fixed-rate share of the market to fall to around 50% between 2023 and 2024. It was during that period that a "third way" product emerged: the mixed mortgage, which offers a fixed rate for the first three to five years before switching to a rate indexed to the euríbor. The structure gives buyers early certainty over their payments while offering banks the chance of higher returns once the loan becomes variable.
The European Central Bank (ECB) began cutting interest rates in late 2024, and the euríbor started falling from the roughly 4% peak it had reached in 2023, easing pressure on variable mortgages and moderating the fixed rates offered by banks.
However, the conflict in the Middle East has renewed inflationary pressures, leading central banks to raise rates again and pushing the euríbor back onto an upward path. That has driven many mortgage holders to opt for fixed-rate loans to protect themselves against further fluctuations in the index.
