Spanish government opens door to neighbors forbidding tourist apartments

The Spanish government is considering legal changes to let residents of a complex of flats forbid any tourist apartments in their building, as announced by the Spanish housing minister, Isabel Rodríguez, during an interview with Spanish TV broadcaster Telecinco.

Under the proposed changes, the law would be amended to allow neighborhoods to veto the allotment of apartments intended for tourist rentals within a given community.

Rodríguez's amendment aims to increase housing opportunities, as tourist development raises rent prices while simultaneously decreasing the supply of housing for local residents.

Recently, in Barcelona, the city council announced its plans to forbid the 10,000 legal tourist apartments in the next four years. The different flats would then be focused on solving the housing crisis, such as going on sale or being available for rent.

In Madrid, where 92% of the city's 12,000 tourist apartments operate without a license, Rodríguez's changes would seek to more stringently detect and regulate rentals, as their usage was recently recognized by the Supreme Court as economic activity.

Tourist apartments "are a phenomenon that affects everyone and is limiting the right to housing and changing the model of coexistence," and therefore, "we must intervene because if we don't have neighbors, we will only have tourism development," Rodríguez said.