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TOURISM

Valencia police pile pressure on tourist flats with more stiff fines

Valencian police are stepping up their crackdown on illegal tourist apartments in the city, with the number of fines and complaints by locals skyrocketing over the last year.

Published: 1 July 2024 10:59 CEST
Valencia police pile pressure on tourist flats with more stiff fines
Valencia is clamping down on illegal holiday lets with stiff fines. Photo: Bearphotos/Freepik

Police in Valencia are clamping down on illegal tourist accommodation in the Mediterranean city.

This follows a request from the local council to put pressure on tourist flats operating without the proper licences, with the number of fines increasing exponentially in the last year.

As of early June a total of 301 fines had been handed in the coastal city, which means that so far this year fines have increased by 358 percent compared to the same period in 2023.

In 2022 just 73 fines were handed out, and in 2023 there were 84. The areas of the city with the most fines were Trànsits, the old town (known as Ciutat Vella in Valencian), Marítim and Russafa, the trendy nightlife district many locals feel is falling foul of gentrification.

The Federation of Neighbourhood Associations of Valencia (FAAVV) has demanded that local authorities hike up the fines for illegal tourism apartments in the city. The current bracket is €600 for minor offences and €4,000 for serious infractions, not enough to dissuade some landlords, they argue. 

READ ALSO: Valencia to crack down on tourist flats in historic old town

Valencia city council recently approved plans to crack down on the use of residential properties as tourist housing in the historic centre in Ciutat Vella, which includes the picturesque neighbourhoods of Velluters, Pilar, Mercat, Carmen, La Seu and La Xerea. Council estimates suggest that 10 percent of all properties there are now used for tourist rentals.

The council has also unanimously voted to suspend new licences for tourist accommodation for at least a year, as average rents in the city are now over €1,000 a month.

READ ALSO: Valencia to stop issuing licences to Airbnb-style lets as rents soar past €1,000

According to figures reported by Spanish daily El País, more than 3,500 tourist flats have opened in Valencia in the last year alone. However, as in almost all major cities across Spain, there are also many thousands of unlicensed tourist properties. 

This comes amid growing anti-tourism sentiment in Spain, with protests in Madrid, Barcelona, Málaga and the Balearic and Canary Islands in recent months. Locals argue the increase in platforms such as Airbnb inflates the local rental market and prices locals out of their own neighbourhoods.

In June, Barcelona mayor Jaume Collboni announced that the Catalan capital would attempt to ‘eliminate’ all tourist rental flats from the city by 2029 by not renewing licences for 10,000 properties in the city.

Local media in Valencia reports that the number of fines in Spain’s third city has soared due to an ‘inspection plan’ deployed by the council of mayor María José Catalá. Valencia’s urban planning councillor Juan Giner recently stated in a plenary session that police had sanctioned 166 illegal flats in just four months.

However, what is striking about this rapid increase in fines is not only their growing number but the geographical spread across almost all areas of Valencia, including those that are not traditionally tourist areas but increasingly targeted by property speculators.

The problem is becoming widespread enough in Spain that the national government is now toying with the idea of regulation.

Spain’s Minister of Housing and Urban Agenda, Isabel Rodríguez, announced recently that the government is studying a reform of the Horizontal Property Law in order to allow property owners to veto tourist apartments in their residential buildings.

In Spain, each building has what’s known as a community of neighbours, referred to as la comunidad in Spanish, and essentially the Spanish government is considering allowing them veto power over tourist apartments in their buildings.

READ ALSO: Spain considers banning tourist lets in residential buildings

Member comments

  1. But how is banning tourist accommodation going to relieve the housing problem? No person in their right mind would offer a property for long-term let, because before they know it, their “renters” will turn into squatters, and they will have to wait months and pay a fortune to get them out. How about changing the law so it doesn’t favour squatting, then maybe homeowners will be more willing to accept long-term lets over holiday rentals.

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For members

BARCELONA

Can Barcelona really ban all Airbnbs?

Barcelona’s mayor recently announced plans to get rid of all tourist flats in the next four years as a means of controlling rent hikes. It’s the most drastic measure so far in Spanish cities’ battle against Airbnb - but will it actually happen?

Published: 4 July 2024 15:48 CEST
Can Barcelona really ban all Airbnbs?

In late June, Barcelona mayor Jaume Collboni made national headlines when he announced plans to revoke the licence of more than 10,000 tourist apartments in the Catalan capital. 

It would “be like building 10,000 new homes,” Collboni argued, alluding to Spain’s need to build huge amounts of social housing to counteract the shortage and price rise of regular long-term rentals for locals. 

Tourism’s impact on Barcelona and the subsequent animosity from residents has been around for over a decade, whereas in other places where anti-mass tourism protests have been held, such as Málaga and Canary Islands, it’s a more recent phenomenon. 

READ ALSO: ‘It kills the city’ – Barcelona’s youth protest against mass tourism

So it’s perhaps no surprise that the Catalan city is the first place in the country to truly aim at cutting out tourist apartments altogether. 

Spain’s Housing Minister Isabel Rodríguez has lauded Collboni’s “bravery” in the fight against the proliferation of tourism lets (up by 60,000 new Airbnb-style beds in just a year in Spain). 

However, there are plenty of voices which oppose the move to make Barcelona holiday let free.

“It’s unconstitutional,” Marian Muro, president of Barcelona Association of Tourist Apartments, told business daily Expansión.

“What Barcelona City Council is doing is expropriating the rights of the holders of tourist licences,” she claimed. 

Apartur is planning legal action against the measure on three levels: through the Constitutional Court, the administrative court and the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU).

According to Muro, Collboni knows that the legislation he’s promised will be “revoked”, and criticises that “no analysis or study has been provided” to justify the move. 

Her association has also told the Spanish press that Barcelona stands to lose “up to 40 percent of its tourists” with said blanket ban.

Collboni’s right-hand man Jordi Valls, in charge of economy and tourism at the city council, has openly admitted that “it’s clear that there will be a legal battle”, adding that “sectors linked to tourist flats appeal to compromise but also threaten legal battles”.

“Amsterdam and New York are doing it, all cities impacted by tourism are trying to get residential harmony to exist again,” Valls told national radio RNE. 

The key for him is to strike a balance between housing being a “financial asset” and serving a “social function”.

“We can’t give up on controlling it,” Valls concluded.

Crucially, the Barcelona councillor has said that since the tourist apartment ban was announced on June 21st, the sale of flats with tourist rental licences has fallen, something also reported in Catalan daily El Periódico, which stated that such sought-after properties were selling for €100,000 above the standard appraisal. 

For economics professor at Barcelona University Gonzalo Bernardos, tourist flats don’t represent enough of Spain’s housing market for a ban to have a sufficient impact.

“Eighty percent of tourist flats in Catalonia are owned by people with just that flat”, Bernardos claimed on La Sexta, so the ban would not have a great impact on “large investment funds or people who want to speculate” with property prices.

READ ALSO: VUT, AT or VV? Why Spain’s holiday let categories matter to owners

Barcelona’s progressive revocation of tourist let licences until 2028 may be endorsed by local and national authorities currently, but it will be a struggle for them to win the many legal battles they are set to face in the coming years from groups with financial interests in the Airbnb market.

Last year, the European Parliament approved new data-sharing rules that clamp down on illegal short-term rentals, as a means of protecting residents of European cities who face shortages of affordable housing.

However, EU lawmakers have not yet considered a blanket ban on Airbnb. 

The EU Charter of Fundamental Rights does state that “The use of property may be regulated by law in so far as is necessary for the general interest”, but completely eliminating the right of Spaniards and Europeans to let out their homes to tourists will be a monumental task. 

READ ALSO: Good tourists, bad tourist – How to travel responsibly in Spain

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