A major Spanish town in the province of Alicante is clamping down on tourist accommodation licences by introducing a major new ‘ban’.
L’Alfas del Pi, located just 3.4 miles from tourist hotspot Benidorm, has followed neighbouring Costa Blanca by agreeing on a two-year suspension of banning new licences for Airbnb style flats.
The council agreed on this at a plenary meeting and to prepare measures to regularise unlicensed properties through a new local law.
Government spokesperson Toni Such warned: “We will prosecute those owners of undeclared homes or those who do not follow the basic rules of coexistence.
“We took the decision for the suspension due to the proliferation of requests in recent years.”
L’Alfas del Pi has seen an unprecedented rise in requests for tourism licences,
L’Alfas council received 61 requests for tourism licences in 2021, but this jumped to a staggering 230 in 2023, according to The Olive Press.
The first nine months of this year have so far already produced 237 requests.
Such acknowledged getting complaints about illegal homes, as well as an increasing ‘nuisance’ in community buildings.
Other areas like Villajoyosa, Denia, and Sant d’Alacant are also looking into what measures they should take amid concerns of overtourism.
This news comes just months after Jaume Collboni, mayor of Barcelona, promised to ban AirBnBs entirely in the next five years as part of his efforts to tackle rent increases, which have been as high as 70 percent, and public protests against mass tourism.
Collboni announced that in November 2028 the city council would eliminate the 10,101 tourist flat licences that have been granted.
The short-term renting of apartments would “cease completely”, he said, adding that “those 10,000 apartments will be used by the city’s residents or will go on the market for rent or sale”.
