Spain’s Supreme Court has struck down a national registry for tourist accommodation introduced by the government to combat illegal short-term rentals, ruling that Madrid had exceeded its authority by imposing rules in areas controlled by Spain’s regions.
The decision is a setback for the socialist-led coalition government of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, which has been attempting to tighten controls on holiday rentals blamed for pushing up housing prices and reducing the supply of long-term homes for local residents in major cities and coastal destinations. ALSO READ: Spanish government to limit short-term rentals and tourist flats to address housing crisis.
The registry, introduced last July and described by the government as the first system of its kind within the European Union, required owners of short-term rental properties to register and obtain an identification number before advertising accommodation on platforms such as Airbnb and Booking.com. ALSO READ: Airbnb faces €64m fine in Spain for thousands of rental ads lacking rental licence.
Under the rules, property owners had to prove the seasonal nature of the rental and were theoretically required to renew their registration annually.
But in a statement issued on Thursday, the Supreme Court ruled that the central government ‘lacks the authority to establish an exhaustive regulation of a national registry that overlaps with regional registries already in existence’.
The court said several autonomous regions already operated their own systems for regulating tourist accommodation and concluded that the state could not impose a parallel nationwide registry on top of them.
The legal challenge had been brought in May 2025 by the eastern region of Valencia, home to tourist hotspots including Benidorm and Alicante. Regional governments, including Valencia and Andalusia, both governed by the right-wing People’s Party (PP), argued that tourism policy falls under regional rather than national powers.
Associations representing the tourist rental sector also opposed the measure.
However, the court upheld one key part of the regulation, maintaining ‘the obligation for platforms to share data’ on rental properties with the authorities, although not necessarily through a centralised system managed from Madrid.
The ruling also noted that while European Union regulations allow authorities to collect information on short-term accommodation listings advertised online, they do not specifically require the creation of a national registry.
Spain welcomed a record 97 million foreign visitors last year, making it the world’s second most visited country after France. Nearly a third of tourists are estimated to stay in apartments rather than hotels.
The boom in mass tourism has fuelled growing public frustration in parts of Spain over pressure on public services, environmental concerns and, above all, soaring housing costs linked to the rapid growth of short-term tourist rentals. ALSO READ: Barcelona wants to revoke all city’s 10,101 tourist apartment licences by Nov 2028.
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