Spain vows to turn 50,000 tourist lets into long-term rentals

Spain’s Ministry of Housing and Urban Agenda has informed holiday let platforms that there are a further 50,876 illegal lets on their sites and has requested that they be removed from online listings.

Since July 1st 2025, all landlords in Spain who want to let out their properties as tourist or seasonal rentals must have registered on the Spanish government’s Single Rental Registry.

Those who did not will not have a mandatory registration number and therefore are banned from advertising their properties on online platforms.

Companies such as Airbnb have been asked to take down any ads that do not have this number.

At a PSOE event in Málaga on Sunday, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez stated that these illegal lets will now be rented “permanently, by young people and families in our country.”

In essence, the Socialist-led government’s goal is for these homes to be incorporated into the long-term residential rental market, although Sánchez did not state how this would be achieved.

Increasing regulation has backfired in the past, with many landlords preferring to leave their properties empty rather than put them on the long-term market.

Since Spain’s Single Registry of Temporary Accommodation was launched at the start of 2025, 336,497 applications have been registered, of which 264,998 (78.75 percent) are for tourist rentals.

Of these, 53,786 holiday lets (20.3 percent) have been rejected, meaning that they can no longer operate as tourist lets.

READ ALSO: Nearly half of Spain’s holiday lets not registered with government before deadline

The reason for not registering or for having applications rejected is often the fact that they’re operating illegally. In Sánchez’s words, “thousands of irregularities” are being committed.

Many declined applications do not meet the requirements for tourist rentals in their city or region and have not been granted a tourist licence with which to operate.

This could indicate the properties don’t have separate entrances, the local neighbours have voted against them, or that they are located in historic central areas of cities where licences are no longer issued.  

Accommodation in the Spanish capital of Madrid will be particularly affected as authorities have identified a “major anomaly” in the registration process, with 83 percent of applications for temporary registration and only 17 percent for tourist rentals.

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One third of the 3,513 applications for tourist rental registrations in Madrid have been revoked due to non-compliance with the law.

Seville tops the list with 2,289 revoked applications. This is followed by Marbella with 1,802 and Barcelona with 1,564.

The regions with the most illegal lets and therefore revoked applications are Andalusia with 16,740, the Canary Islands with 8,698 and Catalonia with 7,729.

Back in May of this year, Spain’s Ministry of Consumer Affairs ordered Airbnb to take down 66,000 holiday let ads for properties that had failed to provide their tourist license on the ad.

At the time of the July deadline to register properties on the new system, data from Spain’s Ministry of Housing showed that only 25.6 percent of the entire tourist and temporary accommodation market in Spain had authorisation to operate. This means that a whopping 74.4 percent were deemed to be illegal.

It seems that many of these properties which had failed to register did not in fact remove them from advertising platforms, meaning that they are now being forced to do so.

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Spain is in the midst of a severe housing crisis with many unable to access affordable accommodation. Many locals blame tourist accommodation for the skyrocketing prices and lack of availability. To try and solve the situation, the Spanish government, along with regional authorities, have been introducing measures to cut their numbers over the last few years. 

European regulations also now require all accommodation that isn’t long-term to have an identification number.