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What’s the law on camping in Spain?

Spain is full of beautiful natural spots, but is it possible to camp anywhere you want? What are the rules for wild camping, the potential loopholes and the fines to avoid?

Published: 6 October 2022 16:01 CEST
Updated: 6 June 2023 16:50 CEST
What's the law on camping in Spain?
Can you go wild camping in Spain? Photo: Dominik Jirovský/ Unsplash

Camping is a popular pastime in Spain and there are many great dedicated campsites dotted all over the country.

But with so many natural and national parks, mountain ranges, forests and rivers, many people want to make the most of them and wild camp overnight.

So, is wild camping permitted in Spain?

Unfortunately, the short answer is that wild camping in any area in Spain is generally forbidden.

The reasons for restricting camping in natural areas range from health and safety to security and respecting the environment.

The general rule is that you must find an appropriate campsite to stay the night.

READ ALSO: Can you camp or sleep over at any beaches in Spain?

What about camping in a campervan or caravan instead of a tent?

Wild camping, even in a campervan, is not allowed, however, you are allowed to sleep in your own vehicle overnight, according to Article 93 of the General Road Traffic Regulations and Manual 08/V-74. This means that you can actually park your campervan somewhere and sleep in it, as long as you don’t appear to be camping.

Practically it means that you can’t set up awnings, chairs and tables or barbecues outside your caravan and must look as though you are simply parked.

Be aware that parking by the coast is forbidden. General Traffic Regulations state that they “prohibit parking and circulation, as well as camping and camping sites, 20 metres from the beach in an urban area or 100 meters in a rural area, counted from the seashore”.

READ ALSO: What you need to know about Spain’s campervan and motorhome rules

Are there any exceptions? What if I camp without a tent?

Vivac in Spanish or bivvying, as it’s referred to in English, is the practice of sleeping outside in the wild without a tent or a campervan. This is a bit of a grey area when it comes to camping law in Spain and you may be able to get away with it in certain rural areas where you can’t be seen. But you need to be aware that you may be fined for it too. 

Are there any other situations I might get away with wild camping?

Wild camping is strictly prohibited in national and natural parks, on beaches, or by the coast, but there are similar grey areas when it comes to free camping on private land.

Technically you can camp in someone’s garden or field if you get permission from the owner. Remember, they may ask for a small fee for doing so.

Wild camping may be more accepted in some rural areas such as in the Pyrenees, but remember it’s still illegal so you can be fined if you’re caught.

What are the fines for camping illegally?

If you are found to be wild camping, you can be slapped with some hefty fines. According to the Coastal Law, you can be fined from €40 for each metre square of space you occupy if you’re caught camping near the coast.

You can also be fined between €50 and €150 for not parking in a dedicated spot near the coast.

Like most rules in Spain though, each region has its own when it comes to how much you can be fined. Here’s what you might have to pay for wild camping in nature in certain regions.

Madrid: €60.10 up to €601.01.

San Sebastián municipality: From €50 to €3,000.

Asturias: From €60.10 to €601.01. 

Murcia: Anywhere up to a maximum of €1000.

Valencia: Between €751 and €1500 for camping on the beach during high season. 

Catalonia: A minimum of €60.10, but if you’re found camping in natural areas, such as the Delta del Ebro, this can rise to €6,000, the highest camping penalty in Spain. 

Extremadura: From €30 to €150.

Granada provice: €100. 

Be aware that the fines could be higher for wild camping in natural or protected areas.

General camping rules 

Campfires or bonfires are strictly prohibited in wild and natural areas, particularly due to the risk of forest fires, which caused devastation across many regions of Spain in the summer of 2022. Starting a fire is considered a criminal offence and you may get a lot more than just a fine if it gets out of hand. 

Remember to take all rubbish away with you and leave the place exactly as you found it and to bury all human waste away from water sources. 

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For members

TOURISM

Ecotax and cruise bans: Why Spain’s mass tourism measures haven’t worked

Regions and cities around Spain have tried several ways to slow down the negative effects of mass tourism on local communities, largely without any luck and not addressing the major problem underpinning it.

Published: 3 May 2024 09:27 CEST
Ecotax and cruise bans: Why Spain's mass tourism measures haven't worked

The Spanish tourism sector continues to grow, but so does opposition to it.

Increasingly in Spain in recent years, anti-tourist sentiment (sometimes veering into anti-digital nomad sentiment) is on the rise, and much of it is born from frustrations about mass tourism and gentrification and their impact on Spaniards.

READ ALSO: Why does hatred of tourists in Spain appear to be on the rise?

In 2000, 46.4 million tourists visited Spain. In those days, travellers (often from Northern Europe) flocked to the coasts to stay in the hotel blocks right on the beach. The classic Spanish holiday, if you will.

But things are changing. By 2023, that figure had nearly doubled to 85.3 million.

Yet during those 23 years hotel accommodation grew by just 7 percent. This statistic, cited by Juan Molas, President of Spain’s Tourist Board and cited in Spanish daily El País, reveals a lot about the Spanish tourism sector and why efforts to try and combat mass tourism (or its negative effects, at least) have failed so far.

Molas’ statistic begs an obvious question: where do the rest of those tourists now stay, if not in traditional hotels?

Increasingly, in short-term accommodation such as tourist rentals and, in recent years, Airbnbs.

READ MORE: ‘Get the f*ck out of here’ – Málaga plastered with anti-tourism stickers

There have been regular protests against mass tourism around Spain in recent months, notably in places like the Canary Islands and Málaga.

Anti-tourist graffiti has appeared in places such as Barcelona, Valencia, Granada, the Canary and Balearic Islands, places that face the brunt of mass tourism in Spain. Locals complain that the proliferation of tourist rental accommodation depletes the affordable housing stock, inflates the local property market, and prices them out of their own neighbourhoods.

Often, these sorts of tourist rental accommodations are unlicensed and illegal. In Madrid, for example, there are tens of thousands of tourist apartments in Madrid available through platforms such as Airbnb and Booking, and yet recent findings show that barely five percent have a municipal tourist licence in order to operate legally. 

“Neither the central administration, nor the regions, nor the town councils have done their homework on the illegal [accommodation] offer, which is the most important scourge of tourism in Spain,” Molas says.

Though the problem seems obvious to many, including experts like Molas, some regions of Spain have focused on other ways to try and limit mass tourism… and they haven’t really worked so far.

READ ALSO:

Tourist tax

Tourist taxes made big news in recent weeks when Venice began charging tourists on day trips to visit the tourist hotspot.

In Spain, Catalonia and the Balearic Islands are the only two regions that have implemented tourist taxes so far, although not with the express aim of reducing the number of visitors.

Rather, Catalonia taxes overnight stays while the Balearic Islands taxes possible environmental damage. Visitor arrivals have continued to rise despite the taxes.

In the thirteen years since the tax was introduced in Barcelona, tourist numbers have risen from 14.5 million to 18 million. Importantly, a moratorium on hotel construction has been in place in the Catalan capital since 2017, which has led to an exponential growth in tourist rental accommodation in the city.

In the case of the Balearic Islands, the annual number of tourist arrivals has increased from 13 to 14 million in the six years in which the so-called ‘ecotax’ has been in force on the islands.

Limiting cruise ships

Coastal and island resorts in Spain have also tried to combat mass tourism by limiting the number of cruise ships allowed to dock there.

In 2022, Palma de Mallorca became the first destination in Spain and the second in Europe, after Dubrovnik in Croatia, to make an agreement with major cruise ship companies to establish a limit of three cruise ships per day, and specified that only one of them could bring more than 5,000 passengers ashore.

In places like Mallorca but also in Barcelona, enormous cruise ships previously docked and released thousands of tourists into the city at once.

But once again, like with the tourist taxes introduced, a limit on cruise ship numbers, although welcome, misses the point — cruise ship customers sleep on the ship, not in the real problem underpinning Spain’s mass tourism model: accommodation.

Tourist accommodation

Varying legislation restricting Airbnb-style rentals has already been introduced in recent years in cities such as Valencia, Palma, Seville, Tarifa, Madrid, Barcelona, and San Sebastián, with varying degrees of success. 

The number of short-term rental accommodation has exploded in Spain. They are particularly popular with remote workers and among digital nomads with the foreign spending power to price out locals. Recent data shows that in the old town of Seville, over half of residential homes are used for tourism. In the area of ​​Madrid’s Puerta del Sol, 28.3 percent are tourist apartments, while the figure stands at 18.3  percent in the centre of Valencia.  

READ MORE: How Spain’s Asturias region plans to limit short-term holiday lets

Tourist taxes and limits on cruise ship numbers are welcome. But they appear to be doing little to tackle the true underlying problem with Spain’s mass tourism model.

For now, measures are being rolled out largely on a regional level, but it may require the national government to step in and legislate, as it did when it scrapped the Golden Visa earlier this year, although again the effectiveness of this measure has also been questioned. 

READ MORE: Is Spain’s decision to axe golden visa about housing or politics?

Increasing the social housing stock more generally would also go some way to alleviate the pressure on Spaniards struggling to pay rent or even find a home.

Tourism is a double edged sword in Spain. The tourism sector has long made up a significant proportion of Spanish GDP and provided employment for locals, but the model it currently has is outdated, it inflates property markets, angers Spaniards, and creates tension between tourists and locals.

In 2023, international visitors spent €108 billion in Spain, 17 percent more than in 2019. Spanish travel industry association Exceltur forecasts that in 2024 it will surpass €200 billion for the first time.

READ ALSO: ‘The island can’t take it anymore’ – Why Tenerife is rejecting mass tourism

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