Spain’s top destination has become so overcrowded with tourists that the popular city is plotting to ban all holiday homes.
More than 12 million people travelled to Barcelona last year, Spain’s second-largest city and now the Spanish tourist hotspot popular with Brits is planning on taking a major step to fight over-tourism.
Barcelona is perhaps Europe’s best-known city break and while the city continues to attract tourists Barcelona City Council has now set a date for the end of the 10,101 licensed tourist flats in the Catalan capital.
“We want the tourist flats as we know it today to disappear as of 2029,” announced the mayor, Jaume Collboni.
Short-term tourists cannot rent in Barcelona unless they have the right type of tourist rental licence issued by the city government, and yesterday Collboni announced that no more licences will be granted or renewed, which means that legal tourist rentals will have gone from the city by November 2028 when the last licences expire.
The move is being sold as a way to ease the city’s housing crisis, which is a major source of frustration and anxiety for local residents and voters, according to Spanish Property Insight.
“More supply of housing is needed, and the measures we’re presenting today are to provide more supply so that the working middle class does not have to leave the city because they can’t afford housing,” said Collboni.
However, the Association of Tourist Apartments of Barcelona (Apartur) disagrees with the proposed move claiming the mayor has made “a call for the city to be filled with illegal tourist accommodation”.
Enrique Alcántara, President of Apartur, asked: “How many shops, restaurants and museums will have to close? Tourist apartments represent just 0.77% of Barcelona’s housing stock”.
He continued: “Getting rid of them will not solve the housing access problem.
“All it will do is increase the number of illegal tourist rentals.” Apartur will fight the policy in court in what could be a long and difficult legal dispute.”
Opposition politician Damià Calvet believes the “real problem is Barcelona’s massive deficit of homes, and a few thousand tourist apartments aren’t going to move the needle when bigger forces determine supply and demand”.