More than 11m homes lie empty across Europe – enough to house all of the continent’s homeless people twice over – according to figures collated by the Guardian from across the EU.

In Spain, more than 3.4m homes lie vacant, in excess of 2m homes are empty in each of France and Italy, 1.8m in Germany and more than 700,000 in the UK.

There are also a large numbers of vacant homes in Ireland, Greece, Portugal and several other countries, according to information collated by the UK newspaper.

Many of the homes are in vast holiday resorts built in the feverish housing boom in the run-up to the 2007–08 financial crisis – and have never been occupied.