The Barcelona City Council seems to want to get serious in the fight against tourist apartments, so much so that it has announced that, in the next five years, the city will extinguish the 10,101 housing for tourist use (HUT) now existing in Barcelona.
This has been announced by the mayor of the city, Jaume Collboni, who explains that the idea is that, by November 2028, the figure of the tourist apartment as we know it in Barcelona will disappear, and that all these homes will be destined to the residential housing stock to expand it.
How does Barcelona want to eliminate tourist apartments from the city?
To carry out the measure, the government plans to apply the Generalitat’s Decree Law approved last November 7 that regulates housing for tourist use (HUT). The new regulatory framework establishes a maximum of five years for the current licenses for tourist accommodations. After this time they become temporary licenses, and the city council can decide whether to renew them or not.
The City Council’s intention is not to renew these licenses, so that by November 2028, the 10,101 housing units for tourist use (HUT) currently in force in Barcelona will have expired and will become part of the residential housing stock.
Update as of March 13, 2025:
Although the city council had already announced the decree, doubts remained about the legal opinion on the matter. But now the Constitutional Court has endorsed the Catalan decree of 2023 that puts limits on tourist apartments and with which the City Council will be able to put an end to this type of accommodation. The TC has concluded that the decree does not violate the right to private property or the autonomy of municipalities.
However, the TC reminds that the decree is not applicable to all Catalan municipalities but only to those that present problems of access to housing, which in Catalonia are 262, including Barcelona.
The Barcelona of the future, without new tourist apartments
The City Council has recalled that it has been fighting against tourist apartments for years. “The PEUAT (Pla d’allotjaments turístics) served to set a cap and fight against illegal tourist apartments,” said the first deputy mayor, Laia Bonet, who recalled that, when it was approved, Barcelona had 6,000 illegal tourist apartments that have gone to about 300 or 400 monthly ads that the City Council has under control.
The intention is that the next revision of the PEUAT (which still has no date) will eliminate the category of housing for tourist use. These activities will end their useful life in November 2028″, insisted Laia Bonet.
In addition , the intention is not to promote any urban planning approach that declares the tourist use of housing compatible with the habitual residence. In this regard, the mayor said that the tourism industry is important, but that the city is at the limit and that the supply of tourist beds cannot grow any more.