Dilip Kuner
NEARLY 400,000 tourist flats are eating Spain’s holiday hotspots alive – and in some city-centre streets, short-term lets now outnumber homes for locals.
A bombshell new report backed by Spain’s National Statistics Institute (INE) has laid bare the scale of the crisis.
Across Spain, tourist rentals make up 1.38% of the housing stock – but in some neighbourhoods that figure rockets past 30%, even hitting more than 50% on a few streets.
Marbella is the worst-hit big city, with 30% of its census sections having more than 5% of homes used as tourist flats.
Cadiz follows at 22%, then Malaga with 12%. In Malaga’s historic Carret y Alamos and La Merced districts, tourist flats exceed 25% – and on some central streets, it’s more than half.
Even in Madrid, the city’s Centro district is packed with over 8,000 short-let flats – 9.3% of all housing there. Around Puerta del Sol, that percentage triples.
In Barcelona, Ciutat Vella and Eixample are also under siege, with around 4,000 tourist apartments in Eixample alone – four times more than in the Old Town. Although their share seems modest (2.8 to 2.9%), the impact on local life has been dramatic.
Andalucian cities like Granada, Cordoba and Sevilla are also seeing their historic centres transformed, with over 10% of homes in some districts turned into holiday lets.
The data, which tracks Airbnb and Booking.com listings, is updated twice a year and reflects peak summer 2024, when a record 397,000 short-term rentals were active. Even the more recent figure from November 2024 – 368,295 – shows the trend hasn’t reversed.
READ MORE: Bubble alert: Property prices in the Balearics shoot up another 15%
From the start of this month, all tourist flats in Spain must register for an official ID number to advertise legally – part of a crackdown on illegal holiday rentals. Authorities hope this will help identify rogue landlords and tackle over-tourism.
But campaigners say the damage is already done.
Outrage is boiling over across the country. Protests have erupted in Barcelona, Alicante and Palma, with locals taping off holiday flats, spraying visitors with water pistols and marching under banners reading “Our city is not for sale” and “Limit mass tourism”.
In response, Spains left-wing government is pushing measures to curb short-term lets and encourage landlords to return to long-term rentals – amid a nationwide shortage of 450,000 homes.
Barcelona’s mayor has vowed to ban all tourist flat permits by 2028, while Madrid, Malaga and the Canary Islands are tightening permit rules.
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