British tourists travelling to Spain may find their choices more limited when it comes to booking holiday apartments in the future.
The government in Madrid is planning to introduce new measures effective as of January 2025, forcing landlords to officially register their rental properties.
The move is designed to appease growing public anger over rising rental and property prices.
Many Spaniards blame the proliferation of holiday apartments for driving up rents and squeezing them out of the property market.
Under the new proposals, landlords will have to obtain a registration number from the Land Registry before they can market their properties on online booking sites such as Booking.com and Airbnb.
The online portals will also have to display the registration numbers on their booking pages.
“The Land Registry will be able to certify that the property complies with local and state regulations, as well as that the residents‘ association has approved that there can be tourist flats in the block,” said Isabel Rodríguez – the Minister for Housing and the Urban Agenda.
She added the new legislation would help combat fraud and stop the illegal or fraudulent use of property for seasonal tourist accommodation.
If the flat fails to meet requirements, then the registrar will not issue a relevant code.
Any registration number issued must be renewed every 12 months by the Land Registry.
Spain has seen a steady growth in the number of tourist flats being advertised on various portals.
According to the latest data from the National Statistics Institute (INE), in February there were 351,389 flats in Spain, a year-on-year increase of 9.2 percent.
By province, Malaga is the most prominent, with more than 41,000 tourist properties, followed by Alicante, with more than 38,000 units, and the Balearic Islands and Las Palmas, with 25,000.
Barcelona has taken the unusual step of phasing out completely apartment rentals to tourists by 2028.
“We are confronting what we believe is Barcelona’s largest problem,” Jaume Collboni – the city’s mayor – said at a local government event in June.
This means that from 2029, barring any setbacks, “tourist flats as we conceive of them today will disappear from the city of Barcelona”.
