Barcelona City Council bans holiday rentals of less than 31 days

BARCELONA City Council has banned renting rooms for less than a month.

The aim is to stop rooms being used for tourism, the Deputy Mayor for Urban Planning, Janet Sanz, explained, saying that allowing it would create a huge rise in the city’s offer for tourists and a danger, “since 670,000 houses could accommodate tourists”.

The Mayor, Ada Colau has said that vacation rental platforms like Airbnb must stop advertising. She said that given the impossibility of controlling this type of rent, “which conceals mafia practices”, the council prefers to ban it completely.

The plan that regulates accommodation for tourist use in the city, called PEUAT, has included this new modification, ensuring that Barcelona currently already has 154,000 regulated beds and that no more are needed.

Last August, the Generalitat approved the use of rooms for 31 days or less.

However, it left the regulation in the city in the hands of the Barcelona city council.

Platforms such as Airbnb had been fined, and since appealed in court.

The PEUAT has been in place for more than four years to supervise the rental of housing for tourist use. Therefore, in order to rent out a holiday home, a license must be requested from Barcelona City Council.

Since last August the council temporarily suspended the granting of new licenses.

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