Barcelona seals off ten illegal tourist flats in a central building

Barcelona City Council has sealed off ten unlicensed tourist flats in the same central building. This action is part of its offensive against illegal tourist accommodation.

The Barcelona City Council has sealed off ten flats for tourist use without authorization, located in the same property in the city centre. This measure adds to the municipal pressure against holiday rentals operating without a license.

According to the council itself, the intervention comes at a decisive moment for its housing policy, which has set a deadline for this rental model as it currently exists.

On the door of one of the flats, officials have placed a sign in Catalan, Spanish, and English reading "ILLEGAL TOURIST ACCOMMODATION SEALED". The notice indicates that the flat is not authorized and that its use for tourism is prohibited by order of the competent authority.

"The Barcelona City Council has sealed this tourist accommodation as it does not have authorization; therefore, its use as such is expressly prohibited by order of the competent authority."

The text also addresses those who have booked a stay in these flats or notice that they are being used for tourist purposes, asking them to report it through the council's website.

The mayor, Jaume Collboni, announced in June 2024 that the council will not renew any of the 10,101 licenses currently in force. These will expire in November 2028, five years after the approval of the Generalitat's decree law regulating the activity and establishing a transitional regime of five years. The municipal goal is to recover nearly 10,000 homes for residential use.

Until that date, the council is pursuing illegal activity through three avenues: advertisements detected on digital platforms, neighbourhood complaints, and direct monitoring of the activity. It acknowledges that hundreds of unlicensed tourist flats are still operating and that, since 2016, it has issued around 9,700 cease orders.

The relationship with digital platforms has been tense. The council recalls that Airbnb once stopped removing illegal ads that were reported by municipal inspection, and the Generalitat identified 6,200 illegal ads on that platform in Barcelona.

The Barcelona Association of Tourist Apartments (Apartur) has called for the immediate withdrawal of the municipal campaign regarding the end of licenses. It argues that the sector is regulated, contributes to public finances, and that eliminating licenses would be counterproductive.

For its part, the council has increased by five times the aid to neighbourhood communities that prohibit tourist flats in their statutes. For residents in the centre, the most direct way to stop an illegal flat in their building is to report it to the council through its website.