New panic is mounting in Spain as an EU law could kill a major city’s plans to keep tourists out.
In the summer, Barcelona announced plans for a citywide ban on all short-term rentals amid growing concerns that locals are being pushed out of the housing market by companies including Airbnb and Booking.com.
The Catalonian capital said that by November 2028 it will cease issuing new licences to properties and not renew existing permits, meaning that from 2029 no homes will have permission to be rented out to tourists.
“We are confronting what we believe is Barcelona’s largest problem,” the city’s mayor, Jaume Collboni said, highlighting that there are now over 10,000 apartments registered as rentals for tourists and the move will see a return of property to the open market.
However, these plans may be shattered, as the ban breaches EU law, according to a complaint filed with the European Commission by an industry group.
Barcelona had nearly 26 million overnight visitors in 2023, which is a 14.8% increase from the previous year, only 11 million of which stayed in hotels, according to Statista.
The number of tourists in Barcelona has increased in tandem with housing costs, which have risen 68% over the past decade, Sky News reported. This has led to calls for controls on tourism to make housing more affordable for residents.
The city has not granted new licences since 2014, but this has not helped to stem the housing crisis, with locals saying they cannot find places to live at affordable prices.
“More supply of housing is needed, and the measures we’re presenting are to provide more supply so that the working middle class does not have to leave the city because they can’t afford housing,“ Colboni said.
He added: “This measure will not change the situation from one day to the next. These problems take time. But with this measure we are marking a turning point.”
The move was set to come as a major blow to platforms like Airbnb, who are coming under increasing pressure from European cities over the impact of their rentals.
London, Dublin, Amsterdam and Paris have placed limits on the number of nights an apartment can be rented annually on the market, while Madrid announced that it will pause granting new licences for tourist flats to try to ease the pressure. It is thought that the suspension will last until 2025.
According to Cities Today, a statement, published earlier this year, from the European Holiday Home Association (EHHA) a lobby group which lists Airbnb’s head of EU policy as one of four directors, read: “Banning short-term rentals while opening the floodgates to new hotels in Barcelona will not fix housing concerns or make tourism more sustainable – it serves only to take much needed income from local families and gift-it to international hotel chains.
“Short-term rentals account for less than one percent of housing in Barcelona and provide much-needed income to local families, while making tourism more sustainable and less concentrated. The EU has already said that Barcelona’s home-sharing rules are disproportionate and will not improve housing challenges, and we hope to work with the leaders on a better way forward.”
In a new statement released on Wednesday, Viktorija Molnar, secretary general of the EHHA, said: “We are convinced that EU law has not been respected”.
