SPAIN’S Supreme Court has overturned the controversial national register for short-term holiday rentals.
Judges in Madrid ruled that the central government overstepped its bounds and had no legal right to create the database.
The landmark decision brings instant relief to thousands running holiday lets who faced being locked out of major platforms like Airbnb and Booking.com.
READ MORE: Malaga approves 100 new tourist apartments through loophole in its own holiday let ban
Regional governments in Andalucia and Valencia spearheaded the courtroom battle, warning that the national law was a blatant grab for powers that belong to the regions.
Madrid lacked the constitutional authority to establish a national register, the Supreme Court stated in its judgment.
The judges agreed that the ministry created a double layer of red tape that directly duplicated existing regional tourism registries.
The national holiday let register was introduced by the central government in Madrid to clamp down on short-term rentals and prevent landlords from using holiday lets to bypass strict long-term lease laws.
It required every property advertised on major digital platforms like Airbnb and Booking.com to obtain a nationwide registration number, adding a gruelling layer of state bureaucracy.
It meant that even if hosts were already fully registered with their local regional authorities and compliant with local laws, Madrid forced them to gather extensive documentation, pay extra fees, and pass hurdles with a land registry official just to keep their listings live online.
This double-bureaucracy triggered widespread administrative chaos, hitting rural areas the hardest, where 70% of holiday accommodations were forced off the market because they could not navigate the paperwork.
When it comes to illegal tourist lets, the register was intended to act as a dragnet.
In Andalucia alone, data from the central government’s sub-delegation identified more than 25,100 properties as illegal simply because they had not signed up to this national database.
That accounts for more than one in four of all such targeted lets across Spain.
Now that the Supreme Court has struck down the register for infringing on regional powers, these same blacklisted property owners are opening talks with legal experts to launch massive financial compensation claims against the state for lost bookings and unfair listings blackouts.
The courtroom defeat comes days after Brussels ordered Spain to stop the duplicate paperwork.
Madrid pushed ahead anyway, ignoring EU warnings until the highest court in the land stepped in.
Click here to read more Spain News from The Olive Press.
