SPAIN’S Housing Minister has confirmed on Tuesday that the government is considering changing property laws which would allow owners communities to block having tourist flats.
Barcelona City Council has announced the scrapping of tourist flat licences in 2028 and Madrid City Council has suspended the award of new permits.
Isabel Rodriquez told Telecinco the national move is based on legal advice following two Supreme Court rulings that backed two communities in making bans in Oviedo and San Sebastian last year.
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The judges said that renting homes for tourist use is an economic activity and ruled in favour of two communities by stopping tourist rentals in several flats.
Isabel Rodriquez said: “It will be the communities of neighbours who will be able to participate in this type of decision, because this phenomenon, which is not exclusive to our country, affects the whole world and the main capitals of the European environment.”
Rodríguez assured in her Telecinco interview that the government will try to reduce the uncontrolled proliferation of this tourist flats- many of them illegal- which are reducing the supply of residential rentals and, therefore, raising prices in large cities and tourist areas.
The minister pointed out that the regions are taking “‘action on the matter’, citing the example of Barcelona.
“It will benefit the citizens of Barcelona who do not want it to be a theme park and who prioritise the right to access housing over economic interests”.
The Tourism Minister, Jordi Hereu, recently spoke out about the increase in tourist flats and defended that ‘putting order in the supply of tourist flats is the first step to govern the negative effects’ that they can have.
“Tourism is an absolutely positive phenomenon in Spain,” added Hereu on his X account when Barcelona’s proposal was announced.
