Barcelona to shut down holiday rentals after court backs airbnb ban
Madrid: One of Spain’s top courts has backed a plan by Barcelona to ban holiday apartment rentals by 2028, rejecting an appeal that argued the measure infringed on the rights of private property owners.
Barcelona was the first Spanish city to adopt a radical decision to shut down all short-term rentals as a way of addressing rising rents.
Autumnal foliage lines La Rambla in Barcelona.Credit: Getty Images/iStockphoto
After the court ruling, Barcelona’s local authorities said they will not renew tourism licences for short-term rentals after 2028.
“The ruling by the Constitutional Court reinforces, validates and gives legal security to this measure,” Barcelona’s mayor Jaume Collboni said. “We are on the right path.”
Spain is the world’s second-most visited country after France, with a record 94 million visitors last year. The country is wrestling with how to balance sustaining tourism, one of the main drivers of its economy, with the needs of locals who say they are being priced out of the housing market by affluent visitors.
In June, Collboni said he would scrap the licences of more than 10,000 short-term rental apartments, basing his plan on a regional housing decree adopted in 2023 that allows municipalities to decide whether to include holiday flats in their planning permits.
The court said that the regional decree for tourist rentals “does not constitute a suppression of property rights”.
Airbnb has urged Collboni to reconsider his crackdown on short-term rentals, arguing it only serves to benefit the hotel sector.
The European Holiday Home Association, which represents short-term rentals on online platforms such as Airbnb, also filed a complaint with the European Commission against the region of Catalonia, where Barcelona is located, for allowing cities to ban such rentals.
