MADRID (Reuters) – The Spanish government on Wednesday announced a tougher crackdown on short-term and seasonal holiday rentals amid growing anger among locals who feel they are being squeezed out of the property market.
The government will investigate listings on platforms such as Airbnb and Booking.com to ensure they have a license, said Consumer Protection Minister Pablo Bustinduy.
“If a house does not have a license for tourism, advertising it on internet platforms should be illegal and punished accordingly,” Bustinduy said in an interview with state broadcaster TVE.
Spain is struggling to balance promoting tourism, one of the main drivers of the Spanish economy, with its citizens’ concerns about prohibitively high rents caused by gentrification and as landlords switch to more lucrative rental properties for tourists.
According to the real estate website Idealista, rents rose by an average of 13 percent in June compared to the same period last year, and by as much as 18 percent in tourist cities such as Barcelona and Madrid.
Barcelona Mayor Jaume Collboni announced a plan to phase out all short-term rentals in the city by 2028.
Apartur, the association of holiday home owners in tourist areas, said the measure amounted to expropriation. The Spanish Constitutional Court is currently still deliberating on the legality of the move.
Residents of Barcelona, the Canary Islands and Malaga have protested in recent weeks against the increase in tourist rentals. Seasonal hospitality workers are struggling to find accommodation in these tourist hotspots, with many sleeping in caravans or even in their cars.
Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez announced earlier this week that the government would create a registry of holiday rentals to limit the number of listings.
Housing Minister Isabel Rodriguez said on Wednesday that the register would not be ready until the end of 2025 at the earliest. Online platforms would then have to provide data about hosts to check whether they are allowed to rent out their apartments.
The government also wants to take measures to restrict medium-term rentals of between one and eleven months. It could also give neighbours in apartment blocks a say in whether an owner can offer his property on platforms, the minister said.
Some union representatives were not so sure whether involving neighbors would be a viable solution.
“The increase in rentals to tourists is a big problem and these measures should not be taken seriously,” said Victor Palomo, president of the Madrid tenants’ union, after a meeting with the housing minister.
“It cannot be that only the neighbors are responsible for regulation,” he said, demanding that landlords pay more taxes.
Airbnb and Booking.com did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
(Reporting by Inti Landauro and Corina Pons; additional reporting by Joan Faus; editing by Christina Fincher and Bernadette Baum)
