The City Council in Seville announced on Thursday 17 that they will majorly restrict the granting of licences for Airbnb-style properties.
The new rule means the number of tourist apartments in each of the 108 neighbourhoods of the city cannot account for more than 10 percent of homes.
Popular destinations that are overly saturated such as Triana, Seville’s historic centre, will cease to have any further licences granted as they have already exceeded the new quota.
Councillors from the right-wing political party Vox supported the measure, which passed despite the left-wing coalition voting against it.
The Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party called for the rules to be “tougher and more ambitious”, the Olive Press reports. According to the socialists, the new law will still allow for 23,000 more tourist accommodations to be granted in non-saturated areas.
However, the council’s Urban Planning delegate, Juan de la Rosa, praised the measure as a “further step” to make the tourism industry more “compatible” with local life. He emphasised the reliance the Spanish city has on tourism, accounting for 25 percent of Seville’s GDP.
The law follows huge outrage from Airbnb owners in Barcelona last month demanding compensation totalling €1billion (£830m) following the city council’s decision to revoke the licences of the 10,000-plus tourist apartments that operate in the city.
In June, the mayor of the Catalan capital announced that tourist flats would be outlawed by November 2028 in an attempt to relieve the city’s housing crisis. Rental prices have surged by over 70 percent in just a decade, with many Spaniards blaming the rising costs on short-term rentals destined for holidaymakers.
Protestors against mass tourism have long argued that short-term rentals take up valuable housing stock and drive up prices, forcing locals to leave the city.
Several landlords have called the new law an ill-thought-out “populist” decision which would hit the income streams of hard-working citizens and do nothing to address the root cause of the housing crisis.
This comes after a wave of anti-tourism protests swept across Spain over the spring and summer this year.
The Canary Islands kicked off the demonstrations against mass tourism on April 20, with tens of thousands of people across the archipelago taking their frustration at the effect overtourism is having on their lives to the streets.
Other protests also happened in the following months in Malaga, Barcelona and Majorca, among other holiday hotspots.
