Spain’s housing vs tourism dilemma is developing at an incessant pace, with news practically every day of anti-mass tourism protests, new city and regional regulations for Airbnb tourist rentals and legislation being considered at a national level.
The issue has been slowly building and on July 3rd Spain’s Housing Minister stated that “tourist lets must be banned and regulated”.
How exactly such radical legislation could be brought out is now the matter at hand for other ministries and the Spanish government as a whole.
Could there really be a blanket ban or will specific restrictions which dissuade certain types of short-term renting be the way forward?
Two of the latest official proposals from Spain’s left-wing coalition government are to apply VAT to tourist apartments to discourage so many of them from popping up and to penalise those who post online advertisements for illegal tourist lets. In Madrid alone, it is estimated that 93 percent of tourists apartments don’t have a licence, more than 12,000 units.
Minister of Social Rights, Consumer Affairs and Agenda 2030 Pablo Bustinduy has introduced the idea of adding VAT to vacation homes to ensure they are taxed “like any commercial activity”.
READ ALSO: Which cities in Spain have new restrictions on tourist rentals?
In an interview on Antena 3, Bustinduy said that if VAT is not applied to holiday lets, then it encourages more of them. “What we have to do is encourage in every possible way that housing is used for its main use, which is for people to live in it, while we build more public housing and social rentals,” he stated.
According to the head of Consumer Affairs, 10 percent of the real estate stock in some cities in Spain is already allocated to housing for tourist use, leading to “price rises, young people who cannot become independent and families who can’t afford rent”.
At the beginning of June, Bustinduy also announced that there would be fines of up to €100,000 for tourist rental platforms with illegal advertisements.
“If a home does not have a license for tourist use, its advertising must be illegal and, therefore, it must be prosecuted, and that’s what we’re going to do,” the hard-left Sumar minister stated.
Bustinduy believes the current situation is negatively affecting the lives of millions of citizens who see that their right to access housing is becoming impossible.
In an interview with news channel TVE, he also advocated adopting more measures to stop the proliferation of illegal tourist apartments in city centres, which he has described as a “problem of a big magnitude”.
These proposals are just two in a long line of ideas the authorities have come up with to try and prohibit tourist rentals or limit their numbers.
A couple of weeks ago, Barcelona announced that it would ban all tourist rentals by 2028.
While last month, Seville said they would not renew tourist licences for apartments in the central areas and Málaga stated that holiday homes must now have an independent access.
Many other cities have also introduced their own rules and regulations.
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