Collapsing prices have hit holiday villa owners and left 'an entire generation of Spaniards with a millstone round their necks'

Spanish homeowners used to have little in common with the wealthy north Europeans snapping up holiday villas and apartments on the Costas. Now both are united in adversity. Both are suffering in a market preoccupied with falling values, negative equity, a glut of unsold new property and, in some cases, doubts about the legality of new estates.