Spain orders Airbnb to take down 66,000 holiday let ads

Spain's Ministry of Consumer Affairs has specifically asked the holiday rental company to take down 65,935 tourist accommodation ads from its website, as it considers them to be in violation of regulations.

The first of these rulings was issued at the end of last year and affected 5,800 homes in several different regions. This ruling was upheld by the Superior Court of Justice of Madrid, but Airbnb later appealed in May of this year. Now the final ruling has been issued.

READ ALSO: New study sheds light on who owns all the Airbnb-style lets in Spain

The most common violation is that the properties have failed to provide their tourist license on the ad, which is mandatory in several regions across the country.

Those that don’t have tourist licences are in fact illegal as it means that they don’t meet the rules set by their various municipalities. This could mean they don’t have separate entrances, the local neighbours have voted against them or are located in historic central areas of cities where licences are no longer issued.

Cases have also been detected where the registration number is incorrect, which could mean that there’s a genuine mistake or that the numbers have been made up.

The Ministry has also found several cases where Airbnb fails to indicate whether the landlords are professional businesses or individuals, which affects consumers' rights.

READ ALSO: The risks of buying a Spanish property with a tourist licence in 2025

Following the court ruling upholding the request to block these listings, it is expected that Airbnb will remove the ads at some point today, Monday May 19th. The ruling affects Airbnbs in Andalusia, Madrid, Catalonia, Valencia, the Balearic Islands, and the Basque Country.

Spain has been cracking down hard on tourist accommodation platforms such as Airbnbs for the last few years now due to the current housing crisis and overtourism. They are both being blamed for the skyrocketing property prices and lack of affordable homes on the market.

Last year, a report from Madrid Town Hall showed that there were around were more than 15,200 illegal tourist rentals in the city, one of the greatest concentration of them in the country.

In Barcelona, since 2016, the city has imposed more than 10,500 fines and ordered the closure of 9,700 illegal tourist apartments. Last year, the city’s mayor even said he would aim to ban all tourist rental flats by 2028.

While in the Andalusian province of Málaga there are 43,366 illegal tourist homes, according to data from the Ministry of Consumer Affairs. This represents more than half of the 85,000 apartments illegally advertised as tourist accommodation in Andalusia.

And in Valencia, the local government say that there are around 12,000 tourist apartments in the city and the vast majority of them are illegal.

READ ALSO: Is buying a property to rent out to tourists in Spain too risky now?