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TOURISM

Why Madrid is struggling with its explosion of illegal holiday lets

If you’re going on a trip to Madrid and have booked a tourist apartment rather than a hotel, chances are that you’ve reserved one of the circa 25,000 illegal holiday lets in the Spanish capital. In fact, only one in 25 is reportedly legit.

Published: 28 November 2023 10:06 CET
Why Madrid is struggling with its explosion of illegal holiday lets
Only 1 in 25 tourist apartments in Madrid are legal. Photo: Jhosef Anderson Cardich Palma / Unsplash

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. 

Only 628 tourist apartments with this licence exist throughout the city, Madrid’s Delegate of Urban Planning, Environment and Mobility Borja Carabante has said.

According to the Inside Airbnb platform, there were 24,828 tourist apartments in the city in 2023. Some estimates suggest that only four percent or one in 25 of them are legal, but the ratio could be even starker.

Knowing the true number of tourist apartments in Madrid may not be possible. Other data from 2023 suggests that they continue to proliferate, with between 4,500 and 5,000 more short-term lets advertised this year.  

READ ALSO: Which cities in Spain have new restrictions on tourist rentals?

The fact that these holiday lets in Spain’s capital don’t meet the legal standards doesn’t prevent owners from advertising them on Airbnb or similar, even though the homestays giant states that owners should have a tourist licence if required.

Complaints about tourist apartments in Madrid have grown by almost 70 percent in the last year, going from 282 between January and September 2022 to 482 registered in the same period of 2023, according to the latest management report of Madrid City Hall’s Urban  Activities Agency.

What is the current law on tourist apartments in Madrid?

In March 2019, one month before the Madrid mayoral elections, former mayor Manuela Carmena approved a special Accommodation Plan to regulate tourist accommodation in the city.

The new rule established among other requirements that tourist apartments should have an independent entrance from the rest of the neighbours. This would affect 95 percent of holiday lets in the city according to her calculations. The rule was appealed by the sector, but the courts ended up agreeing with the City Council in 2021.

READ ALSO: Spain’s Canaries consider limiting short-term holiday lets

What is being done about Madrid’s illegal holiday lets problem?

Now, the current mayor José Luis Martínez-Almeida believes that these rules are not enough and plans to introduce new measures in 2024 to try and curb the tourist apartment problem, without giving any proper details yet.

“We all know that there are thousands of homes that are providing this service. Therefore, the current regulations are not sufficient and are not adjusting to the legality of the city, he said. “We intend to establish a plan that allows us to face the challenge of how to legalise apartments without a licence,” Almeida added. 

Tourists cross Plaza Mayor square in central Madrid, a hotspot of holiday lets. (Photo by OSCAR DEL POZO / AFP)
 

Some urban experts and neighbourhood groups are against Almeida’s plans, arguing that the old law is sufficient. “The problem is not the current law but the lack of will to enforce it,” the neighbourhood associations of Madrid Centro told El Diario.

“If it has not worked, it is simply because his government team has not wanted it to work, evading their responsibility for surveillance and control, preferring to look the other way while the problem spreads,” they add.

Others also blame the lack of inspectors available to check on these apartments.

What are the penalties in place?

To offer a property for tourist use in the city, two legal requirements are necessary –  a responsible declaration issued by the Community of Madrid and a licence from the City Council.

Failure to comply with these rules may result in a fine of up to €3,000 if it is minor, or €300,000 if it is very serious, according to regional law 11/1999 on Tourism Regulation.

How can authorities shut down illegal tourist apartments?

In order for Madrid City Council to close a tourist apartment, they must first prove that it doesn’t have a licence. Once they have done this, they can order them to stop offering accommodation to tourists, giving them a deadline of three months in which to take down the ads and stop operating.

Inspectors must in theory return to the offending apartment to see if it continues to be rented to tourists or not. If they are still there there will be another three-month period that will end with a fine of €1,000. If they still don’t comply, a second fine is issued, this time for €2,000. And if the situation persists, a third penalty of €3,000 will arrive.

For each sanction, a minimum of three months of processing is necessary, which puts the process at a full year, without counting the time it took for the inspections to be carried out, the appeals or possible suspensions.

This means that the process of closing an illegal tourist apartment could take at least 18 months, but the reality is that it usually takes much longer.

Last year, council inspections only managed to close 12 illegal apartments across the city.

How does this compare to other regions in Spain with a tourist apartment problem?

Conversely in Catalonia, the Catalan Tourism Law 13/2002 states that you can be fined between €60,000 and €600,001 for letting tourist apartments without a licence, and temporarily or permanently shut them down.

In 2021 however, Catalan authorities said they would decrease the penalties for some first-time offenders who owned just one tourist let and if the flat used was their usual residence at the time of the infraction.

Why does the issue have to be addressed in Madrid?

Spain’s capital has the highest number of Airbnb properties of all cities in Spain – growing at a rate of 41 units a day – a contributing factor to spiralling rents for Madrileños and the sense that their residential buildings have become hotels, all because of the increased profit short-term holiday lets can bring property owners compared to having long-term tenants. 

Rents have gone up by as much 25 percent in a year in central neighbourhoods such as Sol, Estrella and Almagro. In districts such as Chamartín, Chamberí and Salamanca it’s now the standard for tenants to pay above €20/sqm, meaning that a 100sqm apartment is going for over €2,000 a month. 

Even renting a room in a shared flat can easily cost over €800 in parts of Madrid that aren’t truly central, as the tweet above reflects. 

Madrid is in fact suffering the same consequences of tourists being favoured over locals as countless other cities around the world, and in Spain itself, with Málaga standing out as the latest city which has become ‘too popular’ for its own good. 

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PROPERTY

BBQs, nudity and plants: What are the balcony rules in Spain?

Though many people hang laundry, plants, and flags from their balcony, in Spain the rules on what you can and can't do on 'el balcón' are not well-known.

Published: 8 May 2024 17:13 CEST
BBQs, nudity and plants: What are the balcony rules in Spain?

Imagine the scene: you’ve just bought or signed the lease on your dream apartment. It’s bright and airy, with plenty of space, and even has a nice-sized balcony to get some fresh air on. You can do whatever you want there, right? 

Not exactly. In Spain the rules on what you can and can’t do on a balcony (even if it’s private) depend on a few factors, namely the regional and local rules, as well as getting the approval of the building’s homeowner’s association – known in Spain as la comunidad.

Some of them might just surprise you.

READ ALSO: ‘La comunidad’: What property owners in Spain need to know about homeowners’ associations

There are four main things or activities on balconies that could potentially put you on the wrong side of the local rules and even get you fined: barbecues, plants, laundry, and flags.

In all cases (even if you don’t think you’re breaking any rules) you’ll generally need to consider two things: firstly, does this affect or change the building’s façade? And secondly: will la comunidad allow it?

Barbecues

In Spain there is no national law prohibiting barbecues on private property, so in principle it is legal as long as the barbecue is lit in a private space such as your own balcony, garden or terrace, and not a shared space.

Often in Spain, the roof (usually referred to as la terrazza) is a shared space people use for storage and hanging their laundry, so be sure to check with the comunidad.

In terms of your own balcony, however, although there’s no law saying outright you can’t have a barbecue, you’ll need to take into account the rules and regulations in force in each locality or region. There may also be specific rules within the building that long-term homeowners have developed over the years.

As we will see, many of these low-level regulations are delegated to local governments and town halls in Spain, so the answer to these sorts of questions is usually: it depends where you are.

However, according to Article 7 of Spain’s Horizontal Property Law, “the owner and the occupant of the flat or premises are not allowed to carry out in it or in the rest of the property activities prohibited in bylaws, which are harmful to the property or which contravene the general provisions on annoying, unhealthy, harmful, dangerous or illegal activities.”

This basically gives your neighbours the right to complain about noise, smells, smoke and any possible fire risk in or around their building, which barbecues could plausibly fall under.

As with co-living anywhere in the world, regardless of the regional or local rules, employ some common sense: be reasonable, listen to neighbour’s concerns and take up any disputes with the President of la comunidad.

READ ALSO: What you need to know before having a barbecue in Spain

Plants

Again, with plants the responsibility falls on each local authority to set the rules. In Spain, most regions and town halls state that, as long as the architectural or structural elements of the building are not changed or weakened in any way, putting plants on your balcony is permitted.

However, note that many terraces and balconies do have maximum weight regulations that must be respected in order to guarantee their safety, which is 200kg per square metre. If this figure is exceeded (and it can be proved) you could theoretically be fined.

Laundry

Laundry lines criss-crossing the streets might be one of the more picturesque images of Spanish life, but the people doing it might actually be breaking the rules.

How do you know? You guessed it, it depends where you. You’ll need to check with your local authority on this one, though municipal regulations in Barcelona, Madrid and Valencia all regulate hanging laundry from your balcony, which is again outlined in the Horizontal Property Law.

This principally seems to be because it affects the façade of the building (a common theme when it comes to balcony rules in Spain).

In places with rules about hanging laundry from balconies, you could be fined up to 750 euros if you don’t comply with the rules.

However, according to Foto Casa, even if you live in an area where there are no bans or penalties against hanging laundry on the balcony, you’ll still likely need the permission of la comunidad.

READ MORE: Spain’s weirdest laws that foreigners should know about

What about flags?

Whether it be the Spanish flag, the Catalan, Valencian or Andalusian flags, or LGBT, trade union or football team flags, flags proudly hanging from balconies is another mainstay of Spanish life.

It’s also one of the more controversial ones too, especially within comunidad meetings. Hanging flags on the balcony, as well as allegedly altering the aesthetics and security of the building (the same concern as with laundry) often has ideological connotations that can cause conflict.

Again, as with laundry, hanging flags on the balcony will require the approval of all the owners within the community, something that must be agreed at a meeting, as per the Horizontal Property Law.

However, if the flag is placed inside the property, as it is a private property, fellow homeowners cannot oppose it, even if it is visible from the street, according to Foto Casa.

Nudity 

Article of 185 of Spain’s Penal Code only considers being naked at home to be obscene exhibitionism and sexual provocation if it affects minors, in which case it is punishable with a fine or up to a year in prison.

Therefore, you could technically sunbathe shirtless or naked on your balcony in most cases without getting into trouble, although it won’t necessarily go down well with your neighbours and/or flatmates and you be reprimanded for it.

READ ALSO: Can you go shirtless or wear a bikini in the street in Spain?

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