“Our housing emergency obliges us, forces us, to change the way we do things and to put the priority on housing above our policies for accommodating tourists,” Bonet says.
Property owners plan to fight the decision, arguing that eliminating short-term rentals would threaten their livelihoods and leave the city without enough temporary lodging: some 2.5 million visitors to the city stayed in an apartment in 2023, according to the Association of Tourist Apartments of Barcelona, also known as Apartur.
Residents of the city, which has a population of about 1.6 million, have campaigned against “overtourism” for several years, but recently anti-tourism sentiment has become more extreme.
Residential real estate prices in Barcelona have increased by an average of 38 per cent over the past decade, and rents by 68 per cent, according to the municipal government.
Like in other popular urban areas, many young people who grew up there struggle to afford a place of their own. Authorities say a lack of supply is partly to blame.
Other cities around the world are also struggling to balance the housing needs of year-round residents with the rights of landlords and the allure of economic benefits that being a top tourist destination can bring.
Measures to limit investors converting apartments into holiday rentals have included partial bans, caps on the number of days units can be let out and registration requirements for frequent hosts.
I shouldn’t have to leave. This is my apartment. If the tourists who came behaved, OK, but one out of every 10 doesn’t
Before moving to eradicate tourist apartments altogether, Barcelona officials tried more limited approaches.
In 2020, the city’s then mayor, a former housing activist, made several moves to regulate the market, including introducing a ban on the rental of individual rooms in apartments for stays under 31 days.
Barcelona has also moved aggressively to get unlicensed tourist apartments removed from online platforms.
“We have accumulated lots of know-how in Barcelona that we are ready to share with other cities that want to have this debate,” Bonet says.
Bonaventura Durall runs a company that owns and rents out 52 apartments near Barcelona’s beachfront. Forty of the apartments are in a building that his business and others built in 2010 to tap into the growing short-term rental industry.
He says the municipal government’s plan to phase out holiday rentals is unfair and puts his business and its 16 employees at risk.
“There is an investment behind this that has created jobs and tax revenues and a way of life, which will now have its wings clipped,” Durall says. “This is like you go to a bar and take away its liquor licence or you take away a taxi driver’s permit to drive a taxi.”
Critics also say the move will inevitably create a black market of unregulated holiday rentals.
“We are not saying that these apartments will disappear and therefore the owners of these apartments can’t generate revenue from them,” Bonet says. “They will have the same assets, but they will have to put them to the use they were originally built for, which is to house families.”
Ignasi Martí, director of the Dignified Housing Observatory at Spain’s Esade business and law school, says that in addition to probably facing legal hurdles, the initiative would at most only dent rental costs.
Most studies indicate Barcelona needs about 60,000 new housing units to meet current demand, he says.
Martí thinks removing tourists from residential buildings could improve the daily lives of people who call the city home.
Esther Roset, a 68-year-old retired bank worker, thinks so, too. She has spent years complaining about the tourist apartment above her home, where guests have vomited off the balcony, brought in prostitutes and opened a fire extinguisher in the stairwell.
Apartur argues that such behaviour is rare, in part because of Barcelona’s strict regulations.
Roset has other tourist-related peeves, such as the expensive food vendors catering to foreigners that have swept away the traditional bars where she used to be able to get a simple sandwich.
She pointed to three nearby restaurants that specialise in brunch. Roset, like most Spaniards, does not do brunch.
“I shouldn’t have to leave. This is my apartment. If the tourists who came behaved, OK, but one out of every 10 doesn’t,” she says. “In the end, I will have to follow the advice of a lawyer and hang a sheet from my balcony with the message ‘Tourist go home.’”
