A recent article in the Spanish daily El Pais described the mess of regional laws covering holiday rentals in Spain.

‘Things are moving in the regulation of holiday rentals, but it’s not clear yet in which direction’ the paper reported in an article entitled ‘The agony of renting your home to tourists.’

Chaos set in when the national Government in Madrid decided to devolve regulatory powers over tourist lettings to regional governments, partly in response to the success of home sharing and property rental platforms like Airbnb. Since then there has been ‘an avalanche of disparate and fragmented’ local laws that are constantly changing, leaving many people confused about their rights to rent to tourists.

There’s now a struggle between those who want to deregulate the market, and those who think the answer is more regulation, and the article stated that 641,332 tourists stayed in rented accommodation in Spain in May alone, and Spanish hotels consider holiday rentals ‘unfair competition’ now that the internet has made them so popular and easy to use.

Hotel lobbies around Spain are putting pressure on lawmakers to strangle the holiday rental business with more regulations. They have succeed in the Balearics, where you can’t legally rent out an apartment to tourists without a licence, and licences haven’t been granted for years, leaving only villas and semi-detached homes with any chance of getting a tourist rental licence today. As the article points out, this means that the vast majority of holiday rentals in the Balearics are currently illegal.