Barcelona, one of Europe’s most visited cities, said on Friday it wants to ban the rental of apartments to tourists by 2029 to ease the housing shortage in Spain’s second-largest city.
The licenses for the 10,101 apartments currently approved for short-term rentals and available on platforms such as Airbnb and Homeaway will not be renewed when they expire in November 2028, Barcelona’s left-wing mayor Jaume Collboni told a news conference.
“The city cannot allow such a large number of apartments to be used for tourist activities at a time when access to housing is difficult and when the negative consequences of tourist overcrowding are evident,” he added.
This means that “from 2029”, if there are no setbacks, “tourist apartments as we imagine them today will disappear from the city of Barcelona”.
Cities including Berlin, Paris and Barcelona say home-sharing websites for tourists are robbing locals of long-term rental apartments and driving up the prices of homes still on the market.
Collboni said Barcelona’s short-term rental boom has helped push up rental prices in the city by 68 percent, and the cost of buying a house by 38 percent.
“We are facing what we believe is Barcelona’s biggest problem,” he said.
His predecessor, former housing activist Ada Colau, suspended the issuance of new permits for tourist apartments and banned the opening of new hotels in the city’s most popular areas as part of efforts to combat overtourism.
But that hasn’t stopped the number of visitors to the city, known for its Belle Epoque architecture, museums and beaches, from continuing to rise, especially after travel restrictions were lifted due to the pandemic.
Several local associations have called for a demonstration on July 6 with the slogan: “Enough! Let’s stop tourism!”.
The meeting follows other similar demonstrations held in recent months in other Spanish tourist hotspots such as the Canary Islands and Palma de Mallorca.
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