“In 2028, the use of apartments for tourism will end in Barcelona,” the mayor of Barcelona, who is a member of the Catalan Socialists, said today. According to him, at the end of 2028, the town hall will no longer renew any permits for apartment owners to rent to tourists.
There are now about 10,100 such permits in Barcelona, which, according to the ABC newspaper, is only less than a percent of the housing stock in the city. The opposition therefore criticizes the town hall’s plan, saying that it will not solve the housing problem.
Mayor Collboni has enough support from the other parties in the town hall to implement his plan. However, this measure is very likely to trigger legal disputes, wrote the newspaper El País.
A holiday paradise in danger
To cancel tourist rentals of apartment units, the leadership of Barcelona City Hall wants to use a law approved by the Catalan government at the end of last year, which allows city halls not to renew such permits. Until now, the permits were for an indefinite period, but based on the new norm of the Catalan government, the current leases will expire in November 2028. The town halls can then extend them, but the mayor of Barcelona announced today that his town hall will not do it.
Spain has seen a number of demonstrations against mass tourism in recent weeks. For example, on April 20, 60,000 people took to the streets and beach promenades in the Canary Islands to demand, among other things, a limit on the number of tourists and affordable housing for locals. Groups of people in Madrid and Barcelona also demonstrated in solidarity with them. At the end of May, 10,000 people protested against mass tourism in Mallorca, where last weekend hundreds of people also gathered on the beach with a giant banner “Occupy our beaches”. Last weekend, also in the southern Spanish city of Granada, people demonstrated for limits on the number of tourists.
In two weeks, a demonstration against mass tourism is also planned in Barcelona under the slogan “Enough! Let’s set limits on tourism”. Barcelona is one of the most visited places in Spain, last year over 12 million tourists spent the night there, of which about 80 percent were foreigners.
