Spain’s Housing Ministry has ordered a further batch of short-term rental adverts be taken down, citing the ‘mandatory removal’ of illegally listed properties that fail to meet the requirements for the new tourist property register.
Spain’s Ministry of Housing and Urban Agenda has instructed online platforms to remove a further 86,275 illegal tourist and short-term rentals adverts.
These are properties that applied for a short-term rental registration number in Spain’s new register, but were not accepted because they do not meet the requirements to operate in the country.
According to a Ministry statement: “Spain was the first country in the EU to adopt the EU regulation requiring the creation of a single register for short-term rentals. Since last July, this rule, which is issued by the land registrars and shared with the platforms through the Ministry of Housing and Urban Agenda’s single register, has been mandatory.
READ ALSO: Spain fines Airbnb €64 million for listing banned properties
“Once this Ministry has issued notification, the various platforms operating in this sector must proceed with the mandatory removal of advertisements relating to these properties, which may be being marketed on several of them at the same time” it reads.
Since the launch of the single register, the government has received 412,253 applications, of which 320,620 (78 percent) correspond to tourist rentals, while the remaining 91,608 applications (22 percent) correspond to short-term, non-tourist rentals, sometimes referred to as ‘seasonal rentals’.
Madrid (5,344), Barcelona (5,005) and Marbella (2,993) lead the ranking of municipalities with the highest number of revoked licences so far under the new system.
Málaga province is a particularly striking case, with seven municipalities among the 20 with the highest number of rejected applications.
By region, Andalusia, where one in four illegal tourist flats are located, leads, followed by Valencia and the Canary Islands.
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The Ministry has also highlighted the “great anomaly” in Madrid, where 83 percent of applications correspond to seasonal rentals. In other words, in Madrid many traditional rentals disguised as tourist or short-term formulas are able to circumvent the regulations of Spain’s Housing Law.
The latest batch of over 80,000 properties to be taken down follows news in 2025 that Airbnb removed 65,000 listings as promised, just as the Spanish government flagged a further 55,000 tourist lets.
In December, the Spanish government fined Airbnb more than €64 million ($75 million), for advertising illegal listings.
The Ministry said 65,122 adverts on Airbnb breached consumer rules, including the promotion of properties without a licence or those whose licence number did not match with data in registers.
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What is Spain’s tourist rental register?
It essentially means that in order for a home to be marketed on digital platforms, say on Airbnb or Idealista, it must now appear in a new registry – the so-called ‘lease registration platform’ (Ventanilla Única Digital de Arrendamientos in Spanish).
In the past anyone could advertise their properties on online platforms such as Airbnb. There was no one checking if they actually had a tourist licence when it came to advertising online.
This registry will verify that the property meets all the legal requirements to function as a holiday or seasonal rental. If it meets them all, it will be issued with an identification number to be able to advertise online.
READ ALSO: GUIDE – How to register your tourist flat with the Spanish government
