Barcelona seeks to put an end to renting tourist apartments by 2029, to facilitate access to housing for residents, as announced on Friday by the mayor of this city located in northeastern Spain, which receives millions of tourists annually.
The mayor of Barcelona, the socialist Jaume Colboni, confirmed during a press conference that “the Catalan Parliament allows us” from now on “not to renew the licenses for tourist apartments,” which “will allow us to return 10,000 homes to the rental or sale market.”
According to the municipality, the licenses for tourist apartments, which were renewed for five years last November, will expire in November 2028.
This means that “as of 2029,” if no changes occur, “tourist apartments as we see them today will disappear from the city of Barcelona,” according to the mayor.
To implement this measure, Barcelona wants to use a decree approved by Catalonia’s regional parliament last year, which regulates the number of accommodations licensed for tourist use in cities where real estate pressure is greater.
The municipal council justified in a statement that “the city cannot allow such a large number of apartments to be used for tourism activity in a context in which the difficulty of access to housing and the negative effects of tourist overcrowding are apparent.”
According to Colboni, who considers housing the “main” problem in Barcelona, rents have risen by 68% over the past ten years in the capital of Catalonia, where there are currently 10,101 homes licensed as tourist apartments.
In recent years, Barcelona has suspended the issuance of new licenses under the leadership of former city mayor Ada Colao (2015-2023), a former housing rights activist, in order to regulate the tourism expansion of the city, the leading destination for foreign visitors to Spain.
But this has not stopped the effects of overtourism from continuing to impact housing, especially since the end of the Covid pandemic.
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