Barcelona wants to prevent apartments from being reserved exclusively for tourists in the future. The reason is the “negative effects of excessive tourism”.
The city administration announced that licenses for the rental of holiday apartments would be abolished by 2029. The Mediterranean city of Barcelona in northeastern Spain, with its landmarks such as the famous Sagrada Familia, attracts millions of tourists every year, including many Germans.
The Catalan parliament has created the possibility of “not renewing licenses for holiday homes,” explained the mayor of Barcelona, the socialist Jaume Collboni, at a press conference. This will allow “10,000 apartments to be brought back onto the rental or buyer market.”
According to the city council, the holiday home licenses, which were renewed for five years in November, will expire in November 2028. This means that “from 2029, holiday homes will disappear from the city of Barcelona,” said the mayor.
In a statement, the city administration justified the action with the extremely tight housing market for the residents of Barcelona and the “negative effects of excessive tourism”. The city could therefore not allow such a large number of apartments to be used as accommodation for tourists.
According to Mayor Collboni, who sees the housing issue as the main problem in Barcelona, rents in the metropolis have risen by 68 percent in the last ten years. There are currently 10,101 apartments with a license as vacation rentals. No new licenses have been issued in recent years.
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