Barcelona wants to put an end to the rental of tourist apartments by 2029 to facilitate access to housing for residents, the mayor of this city in northeastern Spain, which receives millions of tourists, announced on Friday per year. “The Catalan Parliament authorizes us” now at “do not renew licenses for tourist apartments”what “will allow us to put 10,000 homes back on the rental or sale market», assured the mayor of Barcelona the socialists Jaume Collboni.
According to the municipality, the licenses for tourist apartments, renewed for five years in November, will expire in November 2028. This means that“from 2029”if there are no setbacks, “tourist apartments as we see them today will disappear from the city of Barcelona”launched the city councilor. To implement this measure, Barcelona wants to use a decree approved last year by the regional parliament of Catalonia, which regulates the number of accommodations with a license for tourist use in cities where real estate pressure is greatest .
Limits to tourism
“The city cannot allow such a high number of apartments to be used for tourist activity in a context where the difficulty of access to housing and the negative effects of tourist overpopulation are evident”justified the municipal council in a press release. According to Jaume Collboni, who considers housing to be Barcelona’s “main” problem, rents have increased by 68% over the last ten years in the Catalan capital, where 10,101 homes currently have a license as tourist apartments.
Barcelona has suspended the issuance of new licenses in recent years under the leadership of former mayor Ada Colau (2015-2023), a former housing rights activist, in order to regulate the tourist expansion of the city, the leading destination for foreign visitors to Spain. But this has not prevented the effects of overtourism from continuing to be felt on housing, particularly since the end of the Covid-19 pandemic. To protest against this situation, several local associations called for a demonstration in the city on July 6 under the slogan: “Enough! Let’s put limits on tourism!”. This gathering follows other similar events already organized in recent months in other major places of Spanish tourism, such as Canary Islands and Palma de Mallorca.