THE WORLD
Barcelona City Council announced this Friday that it will not grant any more licenses for tourist use in residential properties and will not renew existing ones in November 2028. Consequently, in less than five years, the 10,101 tourist apartments currently registered in the city will lose that status.
Mayor Jaume Collboni, in a press conference, announced his plan to eliminate the so-called HUT (habitatges d'ús turístic) before 2029, in accordance with the decree law approved by the Generalitat last November, which regulates this sector by limiting the granting of licenses.
"The city cannot afford such a high number of tourist apartments in a context where the difficulty of accessing housing and the negative effects of tourist overcrowding are evident and shared," explained the Socialist councilor when presenting the proposal of the municipal government, which must be approved by the plenary session of the City Council and will be implemented in the next term, since the current one concludes in 2027.
The regulation, approved by Parliament in December, establishes a maximum of five years for the validity of licenses and leaves their renewal in the hands of the municipalities, which must be subject to the modification of urban planning to expressly include the possibility of accommodating apartments for tourists, justifying that there is sufficient land for permanent or residential housing.
The proposal from the local PSC is to transfer these apartments from tourist to residential use to the sale or rental market. According to City Hall data, rental prices in the Catalan capital have risen by 68% in the last 10 years, while purchase prices have increased by 38%.
Tourist apartment employers' association
The Barcelona Tourist Apartment Association (Apartur) has accused Collboni of "condemning the city to poverty and unemployment." The association, which represents some 350 companies and owners in the sector, asserts that "tourist apartments make up only 0.77% of Barcelona's total housing stock, a figure that will not solve the housing problem." According to its president, Enrique Alcántara, "the mayor has called for the city to be filled with illegal tourist accommodations.".
Currently, the regional decree law is on the table of the Constitutional Court, which must study the appeal of unconstitutionality presented by the PP in February.
Collboni also announced another measure aimed at curbing rising prices and increasing the city's housing stock. Specifically, this involves modifying the requirement that 30% of new developments and major building renovations be reserved for social housing, a measure in place since 2018 under former mayor Ada Colau.
The proposal from the Socialist municipal government is to relocate the affected development to nearby plots of land and allow social housing developers to build the new subsidized housing units, for which the City Council would have preferential rights of acquisition. In other words, the new units could be built in neighborhoods adjacent to the affected development or in different buildings within the same neighborhood.
