MADRID — Some cities and regions can’t take it anymore. Mass tourism has overwhelmed everything from streets to restaurants to public services. Housing is the main problem, however, in cities colonized by tourists, especially during the summer months, where more and more residents are being pushed out due to rising real estate prices.
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Speculation has caused record high prices in places like Palma, capital of the Spanish island of Mallorca. This summer, thousands of Mallorcans took to the streets to demand measures to stop the tourist invasion. In this context, Palma de Mallorca announced an amendment to the city’s General Plan to prohibit tourist rentals in all its homes.
This idea has made its way to other Spanish cities, including Barcelona and, more recently, Malaga, which have adopted similar regulations with varying degrees of intensity. On Oct. 23, Malaga’s City Council announced a plan to prohibit the registration of new holiday accommodation in up to 43 neighborhoods, areas in which at least 8% of the properties are dedicated to tourism.
“This is not the end, it is the beginning,” said Urban Planning Councilmember Carmen Casero.
Last June, she had already begun the process by limiting new tourist housing licenses to properties that had an independent entrance only, a regulatory change that did not affect those that were already authorized to be turned into tourist housing.
Cities take action
In Barcelona, the new mayor, Jaume Collboni, has promised not to grant more licenses of this type nor to renew existing ones with the goal of writing off more than 10,000 tourist apartments in the Catalan capital by 2029. He wants these properties to return to residential use, either in the rental or the sale market, in order to lower the high prices per square meter in the city.
The measures is backed by Spain’s Minister of Housing, Isabel Rodríguez. “You have my full support in this task,” she told the mayor on social media.
Last June, in Valencia, where more than 3,500 new tourist apartments opened in 2023, the City Council’s Urban Planning Commission unanimously prohibited turning premises meant to serve as public service’s offices into tourist housing in the historic center of the city.
“We want it to be a residential neighborhood, so we decided that it was not compatible with this goal and that no new tourist apartments would opened in the buildings where our neighbors live,” said Urban Planning Councilmember Juan Giner.
37% of tourist rentals are operated illegally in the city
Palma, one of the municipalities most affected by gentrification, is one step ahead of Spain’s other major cities. Since 2018, the Balearic capital has prohibited holiday rentals except for single-family homes, chalets or detached houses. At the beginning of the summer, the City Council announced it was going to extend the ban to this type of property. Despite the current regulations, according to a study by Spanish online newspaper elDiario.es, 37% of tourist rentals are operated illegally in the city.
In Barcelona, during the eight years of former Mayor Ada Colau’s term, the City Council closed 6,000 apartments illegally dedicated to tourism. Nevertheless, 300 homes are still detected as marketed illegally in the city today.
Madrid turns a blind eye
The issue of holiday rentals is, one way or the other, on the agenda of several Spanish parties across the political spectrum. While in Barcelona, the left-wing Comuns acted first – and the Socialists’ Party of Catalonia (PSC) took over – the conservative and Christian-democratic People’s Party is the one leading the charge in Palma and Malaga.
Yet certain cities continue to deny the evidence: “Madrid does not have a problem with tourism,” Mayor José Luis Martínez Almeida said last April. Yet the Spanish capital is feeling the consequences of more than 16,000 tourist homes that being operated illegally and are causing rental prices to soar, becoming unaffordable for thousands of people.
Nevertheless, Madrid City Council did announce back in July that it was going to prohibit the transformation of commercial properties into tourist accommodations, implicitly recognizing the problems this type of property can create.
As the debate continues over this type of apartment, Spain’s Supreme Court issued two rulings on Oct. 7 allowing communities of owners to ban tourist rentals in their property “through agreements adopted in a meeting by a majority of three-fifths,” a measure included in a 2019 law on urgent measures in housing and rental matters. The rule can now be applied in any Spanish locality.
