Barcelona demands Airbnb remove more than 4,100 properties for tourists

Barcelona Town Council has demanded that Airbnb remove 4,102 advertised properties from their website. Some are valued at 60,000 and others at 600,000 euros. 

Last Friday, the town council sent an order to the property platform to deactivate any adverts within 15 days which do not have a license and therefore facilitate illegal tourist activity. If they do not comply with the new order, the town council has announced that it will impose sanctions against Airbnb as a company. 

Last January, Barcelona’s town council passed the Special Urban plan for tourist accommodation. One of the new regulations in relation to the shared homes advertised on Airbnb’s website regards renting rooms for tourist use for periods of 31 days or less, as previously stated by the decree 75/2020 on the 4th August in Catalunya. 

The new urban plan restricts renting rooms to tourists and only allows those renting out their homes to offer accommodation to tourists who retain a habitual residency. Until now, according to Barcelona’s town council, this circumstance has not been realised in any of the investigated cases so far, so no permission has been given and all of the 4,102 properties are considered illegal.

Barcelona’s deputy mayor Janet Sanz has explained that the new municipal government requested the deactivation of these properties from the Airbnb website in order to avoid conflicts of interest between tourists and residents in certain neighbourhoods throughout Barcelona.  

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