Spain’s war on tourist apartments continues with new law set to come into effect this week

COMMUNITY property owners associations will get a veto over homes being used for tourist accommodation from this Thursday.

This reverses the long-standing policy where tourist lets could be set up within apartment blocks with no permission required from neighbours.

In a change to the Horizontal Property Law, owners will need approval from the owners association besides needing to obtain a tourist license to legally charge rent.

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Up to this week, a community could only retrospectively overturn the use of a property for tourism if they got a three-fifths majority at a meeting.

The law change makes it clear that ‘prior’ and ‘express’ authorisation will now be needed.

The president of Madrid’s Professional Association of Property Administrators, Julia Martinez Torres, told the El Mundo newspaper: “This regulation was necessary to avoid tensions in coexistence and this previous step is a step forward to approve or disapprove this economic activity in a residential building,”

Protests were held across several Spanish capitals last year over the uncontrolled rise in tourist apartments, many of which were unlicensed.

That has fuelled property price rises leading to a number of cities introducing or planning to implement moratoriums on any new licenses as well as clamping down on illegal lets.

Malaga’s mayor, Paco de la Torre last week announced a three-year ‘global moratorium’ on new tourist flat licenses in addition to restrictions introduced last year.

A fresh protest over ‘tourist saturation is scheduled to take place in Malaga on Saturday.

Barcelona meanwhile will stop issuing tourist accommodation licenses in 2028.

Coupled with the moratoriums are more inspections and bigger fines for transgressors as well as more extreme measures like cutting off utilities to unlicensed holiday flats.