Renting your Spanish flat to tourists in 2026: what you need now that the Supreme Court has scrapped the registry
In May and June 2026 Spain’s Supreme Court annulled, in three rulings, the single national registry for short-term rentals: the number that platforms had demanded since July 2025 is no longer needed. Many owners read that as “you can now rent freely” — and got it wrong: only the national layer fell, while four others remain and still carry fines. Below, in order: what to do before your first booking, how long it takes and what the tax comes to for your residence status.
This is for you if:
• you own a flat or house in Spain and want to rent it whole, or a room, by the night or the week;
• you are a private individual, not a hotel or a management company;
• you live in Spain or abroad (for tax, that is the main split);
• you want the order of steps and the cost, not to fight a fine already issued (that is a different page).
What I need to rent legally
Five layers instead of one registry: answer five questions and get your order of steps, timing and tax rate.
What the Supreme Court annulled — and what stays
The registry that from 1 July 2025 issued a number through the Registro de la Propiedad was annulled outright: the procedure itself, the duty to obtain a number and pass it to platforms, and the checks on that number were all found to be outside the State’s powers. Not annulled: the digital window for data exchange between platforms and authorities, the definition of short-term rental, and the platforms’ duties under the EU regulation. What that means for you:
- no longer needed: the national number, the yearly confirmations tied to it, trips to the Registro de la Propiedad;
- still needed: the regional licence or registration, your community’s consent, police registration of guests, tax;
- the platform may require a regional number where your region has one, and may take the listing down without it.
Layer 1. Your community of owners: an express “yes” by three fifths
Since April 2025 an owner who wants to let to tourists must obtain the express approval of the owners’ meeting beforehand: three fifths of all owners, holding three fifths of the shares. Silence from the community does not count as approval. Without the minutes, the president may demand that you stop, then go to court, which can prohibit the activity and, in the worst cases, deprive you of the use of the flat for up to three years.
What to do: ask the president in writing to put the item on the agenda; the meeting votes; the minutes with the result are your document for the licence in regions that ask for it. By the same majority the community may charge you a surcharge on common expenses, capped at 20 %. Decisions have no retroactive effect: if you were letting lawfully before the rules changed, a new ban does not automatically reach you — but that is a dispute, not a rule. Transitional rule: whoever was lawfully letting to tourists before 3 April 2025 and had already complied with the regional tourism rules carries on under those terms without new consent.
Time: one meeting (typically one to two months including the notice). Cost: nothing, apart from the surcharge.
NAVIBuild my letting plan
NAVI will show the next step.
Layer 2. Region and city: licence or declaration
Tourism is a regional competence in Spain, and now that the registry is gone this is the only administrative layer. Each region runs its own registry of tourist dwellings, its own requirements for the flat (habitability certificate, air conditioning, evacuation plan, a plaque at the door) and its own answer to the key question — whether new permits are issued at all where your flat stands. Several cities have moratoria or phase-out plans; there a new licence is impossible, and no Supreme Court ruling changes that.
What to do: look up your region in the tool above; file the declaration or application with the regional registry; wait for the number; put it in your listing. In a number of regions rooms in your own flat cannot be let to tourists — check before you buy furniture.
| Region | What you need before the first booking | Valid for | “Tourist” threshold | Rooms | Fine for letting without a declaration |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Catalonia | Municipal permit; in 262 municipalities (Barcelona included) also an urban-planning licence | Licence 5 years; existing flats must obtain it by November 2028 | up to 31 days | No; only a “shared home” (you live with the guests, ≤4 places) | €3,001–60,000; breach of conditions up to €600,000 |
| Balearic Islands | Declaration; no new declarations for flats in multi-unit buildings since 16.04.2025 | 5 years, renewable | stay ≤30 nights | No | €30,001–50,000 (advertising), €50,001–500,000 (letting) |
| Canary Islands | Declaration to the cabildo + cédula urbanística; dwelling over 10 years old (5 on El Hierro, La Gomera, La Palma) | 5 years (10 on the three small islands) | up to 31 days (since 15.08.2026); “occasional” ≤15 days a year | Counts as tourist accommodation — check with the cabildo | €30,001–300,000 |
| Andalusia | Declaration → RTA registry; code in adverts; municipal limits (Málaga, Seville) | Open-ended | up to 2 months to one person | Yes, if you live in the flat, ≤6 places | €2,001–18,000 |
| Madrid | Declaration + CIVUT from an architect → registry; the City of Madrid has its own rules | Open-ended | No threshold | No, whole flat only | €30,001–300,000 |
| Valencia region | Municipal compatibility report → declaration → registry | 5 years | up to 10 days | No | €100,001–600,000 |
| Basque Country | Prior declaration; in tense-market areas new ones are suspended | Open-ended | up to 31 days, ≥2 times a year | Separate regime with its own declaration | €10,001–100,000 |
| Galicia | Prior declaration; REAT code in adverts | Open-ended | <30 days, ≥2 times a year | No | €901–9,000 |
| Murcia | Declaration before starting; details in the regional decree | Open-ended | Check | Check | €1,001–10,000 |
| Aragon | Declaration to the tourism department | Open-ended | Check | No, whole flat only | €601–6,000 |
Note: municipalities set their own limits and moratoria (Barcelona, Madrid, Málaga, Seville, Valencia, Palma) — check your city’s plan with the council before filing. Other regions: choose “Another region” in the tool and use your community’s tourist-dwelling registry.
Layer 3. The police: every guest registered
Anyone who provides paid overnight accommodation — professionally or not — must notify the activity to the Interior Ministry’s registry before starting and then communicate the guests’ data through the SES.Hospedajes platform. This is not a hotels-only rule: it was written precisely for flats let through portals. The booking platform does not do it for you.
What to do: register once as the person running the activity; then, for every contract, send two communications — immediately and within 24 hours at the latest: when the booking or contract is made (and if it is cancelled) and at check-in; at check-in everyone over 14 signs, and a child’s data is supplied by the accompanying adult. If you do not let as a business you need not keep your own register, but the communications are compulsory. Cost: zero. Breaches are fined under the public-security law.
Layer 4. Tax: three different rates
- Resident of Spain. Income from tourist letting goes into your IRPF at the general scale; the 50 % or higher reduction granted for letting a home as someone’s permanent residence does not apply here. Expenses (mortgage interest, IBI, insurance, depreciation, utilities) are deducted in proportion to the days let; for the empty days an imputed income is charged, as with any second home.
- Resident of another EU or EEA country. 19 % on net income: expenses for the days let are deductible if you can show they relate to the income. Return: modelo 210, for each quarter with income.
- Resident outside the EU (United Kingdom, Russia, United States, Switzerland). 24 % on gross income, no expenses, modelo 210.
- VAT. As long as you only hand over keys and clean between guests, the letting is VAT-exempt. Cleaning during the stay, linen changes, breakfast — that is a hotel-type service: VAT and, as a rule, business status. It is the most common way to slip into a different tax regime without noticing.
Layer 5. The platform
Since 20 May 2026 platforms operate under the EU regulation: wherever a regional registration exists, they must show the number in the listing and take the listing down at the authority’s request. The annulment of the national registry did not remove those duties — only the source of the number changed. If a platform keeps asking for the national number, cite the Supreme Court rulings (dates in the header of this page) and enter the regional one.
Three frequent cases
You already hold a regional licence. Nothing new is required: remove the national number from the listing, check that the regional one is current (in several regions licences now expire and must be renewed) and that you have the community’s minutes if you started after April 2025.
Your community voted against. The regional licence does not override the ban: you cannot let to tourists. Options — a new vote (bylaws and decisions change by the same three-fifths majority), seasonal letting for months under an ordinary contract, or long-term letting.
You let by the season to students or workers. Under the tenancy law this is a ‘temporada’ letting, and a genuine seasonal lease may fall outside the tourist regime — but whether a regional licence is required is decided not by the contract’s label but by your autonomous community’s definition and the facts: length, sales channel and recurrence. The contract must state the real reason for the term (study, work, treatment), not disguise tourism; check your region’s threshold and test in the tool above. The Interior Ministry registry still applies: in the Ministry’s stated position it covers any form and length of let as long as the property is not let as a home, and a seasonal let for study or work is exactly that. If the home is marketed through tourist platforms or by the night, in most regions that is a presumption of tourist letting, but it is not a universal rule: in Andalusia a contract longer than two months in a row with the same tenant, in Valencia from 11 days, in the Balearics longer than 30 nights and in Catalonia longer than 31 days stay outside the tourist regime whatever the channel; in Galicia what makes a let tourist is not the channel but repetition — two or more short contracts a year; in the Basque Country it is the channel or that same repetition. Check your region’s threshold in the regional table.
Traps
- “The registry is gone, so anything goes.” One of five layers fell. Fines for letting without a regional licence are issued by the regions, and the court did not touch them.
- Starting before the community minutes. Since April 2025 consent is needed BEFORE the first booking; “nobody objected” is not minutes.
- Hotel-type services “for the rating”. Daily cleaning and breakfast move you into VAT and business status.
- Buying “for Airbnb” in a city with a moratorium. First, whether the municipality issues new licences at all; then the flat.
- Not registering guests. Police registration is compulsory even for a single room; the platform does not replace it.
Real cases: eight rulings on what you may and may not do after the registry was struck down
The Supreme Court annulled the national short-term rental registry but dismissed the rest of the claim: regional licences and platform rules stand. The Valencia region challenged the royal decree that, from July 2025, required a number from the Registro de la Propiedad and barred short-term listings on platforms without it. On 19 May 2026 the Supreme Court held that the State has no competence to create such a procedure: the registry itself, the duty to register and obtain a number, and the checks on that number were annulled. Two weeks later the same conclusion was repeated in the claim brought by Catalan tourist-apartment associations.
What was not obvious. The operative part annuls only the articles on the registry and the number and “dismisses the claim in all other respects”: the digital window for data exchange between platforms and authorities, the definition of short-term rental and the platform duties under the EU regulation remain in force.
Outcome: the national number is no longer needed for letting or for a listing; nobody paid anyone in this case beyond court costs. The ruling makes no provision for refunding what was paid for a number.
This is the event this page is written about. It does not mean “you may now let freely”: the four other layers — community, region, police, tax — were not touched by the court.
A studio in central Barcelona on Airbnb without a Catalan registry number: a €60,001 fine upheld even though no tourist ever stayed. In November 2024 Barcelona city inspectors found a listing for a studio in the Sant Antoni district with no Catalan tourist-registry number. They twice tried to book it for four nights and were quoted about €100 a night. Under the city plan no licence could be obtained for that flat. The council imposed the minimum fine for a very serious infringement. The owner objected that the notices had gone to his tenant, that he was an employee and not a tourism business, and that the booking was never completed.
What was not obvious. The court treated the listing itself without a registry number as the infringement, not a stay; and the person liable is the owner of the dwelling, not the platform and not whoever actually ran the flat.
Outcome: the fine of €60,001 upheld in full, with no order for costs. This is a first-instance ruling of July 2026; whether it was appealed was unknown on the date of checking.
The Catalan scale of fines for letting without a permit starts at €60,001 for very serious infringements, and Barcelona applies it to ordinary owners. Annulment of the national registry changes nothing here: the registry is regional.
Madrid fined an owner €30,001 for a tourist flat without a separate entrance; the court annulled the fine because in 2018 the council itself said no entrance was needed. The owner filed the declaration to start tourist letting in April 2018. Madrid city council later ordered him to stop, imposed a coercive payment and, in June 2023, a fine for a use incompatible with planning rules: the flat had no separate entrance. The first-instance court upheld the fine. The appeal chamber found that in 2018 the council publicly held that no separate entrance was required where tourist accommodation did not take up the whole building.
What was not obvious. No fault, no penalty: an owner who acted in reliance on the administration’s officially stated position cannot be fined. But annulling the fine does not legalise the activity: the order to stop was not set aside.
Outcome: the fine of €30,001 annulled, with first-instance costs charged to the council. What became of the flat itself does not follow from the ruling.
Keep everything the administration published at the time you started: screenshots, letters, replies. That was the only thing that protected this owner, and it protects against the fine, not the right to carry on.
A Madrid community banned tourist letting by a three-fifths vote; the owner demanded unanimity and lost in the Supreme Court. The meeting adopted a resolution prohibiting tourist-apartment activity in the building. More than three fifths of owners and shares voted for it, but one vote was against and one abstained. The company owning the flat challenged the resolution: restricting property rights, it argued, required unanimity. The first-instance court dismissed the claim, the appeal court agreed with it. The plenary of the Supreme Court’s Civil Chamber set the appeal ruling aside on 3 October 2024 and the same day ended a dispute from Marbella with the same conclusion.
What was not obvious. The court said plainly why unanimity is impossible: the “no” vote of the flat’s own owner would then block any ban. Three fifths of owners holding three fifths of the shares are enough.
Outcome: the community’s cassation appeal allowed, the ban stands; the owner pays the costs of the appeal. No sum of money in the ruling.
Since April 2025 this doctrine is written into the law: by the same majority the community not only bans but must approve your letting in advance. Your own vote will not stop a ban.
The bylaws of a building in San Sebastián banned “any economic activity” in the flats and never mentioned tourists; the Supreme Court held that tourist letting falls under the ban. The community rules prohibited using the flats as an office, practice, clinic or for “any economic activity” unless the stairwell allowed it unanimously. A group of owners asked the court to declare that short-term and tourist letting was outside that ban. Two courts refused; on 29 November 2023 the Supreme Court dismissed the cassation appeal and confirmed the ruling.
What was not obvious. The word “tourist” need not appear in the bylaws: letting to tourists is an economic activity of the same kind as the examples listed, and the ban covers it.
Outcome: the owners lost, pay the costs of both appeals and forfeit their deposits; no damages in the case. In the same period the court, in a case from Oviedo, ordered tourist letting of two flats to stop under similar bylaws.
Before buying a flat “to let”, read the bylaws word for word. A ban on “economic activity” is a ban on tourists, and it applies regardless of any regional licence.
The opposite outcome: the bylaws described the flats as “the owner’s or tenant’s home” and banned only clinics and harmful uses — not enough to prohibit tourist letting. The community of a Madrid building sued the owner of a tourist flat, relying on the bylaws. The first-instance court dismissed the claim, the appeal court sided with the community. On 18 February 2025 the Supreme Court set the appeal ruling aside: the bylaws merely describe the purpose of the flats and list prohibited harmful uses, and contain no clear, precise and express ban on tourist use.
What was not obvious. A restriction on property rights must be stated clearly and expressly; a vague description as “home” does not exclude tourists. Cases 4 and 5 on this page are not a contradiction but two sides of one rule.
Outcome: the flat’s owner won, the first-instance ruling was restored; no sum of money.
If your building’s bylaws are silent or vague, a ban is only possible by a new three-fifths resolution of the meeting — and it does not apply retroactively.
Supreme Court of Spain, Civil Chamber · 18.02.2025 · № 264/2025 · STS 725/2025 · ECLI:ES:TS:2025:725
Owners of Paris studios tried to knock down the local permit regime with EU law on the freedom to provide services; the Court of Justice replied that a housing shortage justifies prior authorisation. Two companies repeatedly let furnished studios in Paris for short stays without permission to change the use of the dwellings. The French courts imposed fines and ordered the premises returned to residential use; the Court of Cassation asked the Court of Justice whether the Paris regime was compatible with the Services Directive. On 22 September 2020 the Grand Chamber answered that a prior-authorisation regime in municipalities with a tense housing market, introduced to secure a sufficient supply of affordable long-term housing, is justified by an overriding reason of public interest and proportionate.
What was not obvious. Even a “compensation” duty — converting other premises into housing in exchange for the one let — was accepted by the Court. EU law does not override municipal moratoria.
Outcome: the rule was set, and the French fines of €15,000 per studio were afterwards upheld by the Court of Cassation.
The argument “the EU short-term rental regulation lets me rent” does not work: the 2024 regulation governs data exchange, while allowing or banning remains the right of the city and the region.
Court of Justice of the European Union, Grand Chamber · 22.09.2020 · ECLI:EU:C:2020:743
Airbnb challenged an Italian law that made the platform report rental contracts and withhold tax on the rent; the Court of Justice found both duties permissible. Italy’s 2017 regime for rentals of up to 30 days required intermediaries to report contract data to the tax authority and to withhold tax at source where the payment passed through them, and required non-residents to appoint a tax representative in Italy. Airbnb Ireland challenged the regime and the Italian Council of State referred the questions to the Court of Justice. Judgment of 22 December 2022: collecting and passing on data and withholding tax do not breach the freedom to provide services; the duty to appoint a tax representative does.
What was not obvious. A platform may lawfully be turned into the State’s tax agent: data on your letting and part of the payment go to the tax authority directly from it.
Outcome: the rule was set, no fine was imposed in the case itself; the Italian law provided for €500 to €5,000 for a platform’s breach.
In Spain platforms already report hosts’ income under EU-wide data-exchange rules. Undeclared income from letting through a platform is not a risk but a matter of time.
Court of Justice of the European Union, Second Chamber · 22.12.2022 · ECLI:EU:C:2022:1018
Six cases are Spanish courts, two are the Court of Justice of the EU. Together they draw the line: the national number is gone, while the community, the region and the tax office remain. We check your flat against all five layers.
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We check your region and municipality, assemble the file for the regional registry, draft the request to your community president and the wording for the vote, work out the tax for your residence status and tell you whether you have already crossed into VAT. If a listing was removed or a fine arrived, that is a separate appeal route.
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FAQ
Do I have to register anything again now that the registry is annulled?
No: the national number was annulled and replaced by nothing. The regional registry is as it was.
Can I let a room in the flat I live in?
It depends on the region: some allow only whole units, some allow rooms with limits. The community’s consent and guest registration apply to a room too.
How many days a year can I let without a licence?
Spain has no nationwide “up to N days without a licence” threshold: what makes a letting “tourist” is the format (furnished, marketed through tourist channels, for profit) and the regional rule, not the number of days. Some regions do set a duration threshold — see the tool.
What about the money I paid for the national number?
The rulings say nothing about refunds; that is a separate claim against the body that charged the fee. Do not expect an automatic refund.
The platform took my listing down demanding a number.
Check which one: the regional number is mandatory where it exists; the national one is not. A reply to the platform citing the dates of the Supreme Court rulings usually settles it.
Sources
- Real Decreto 1312/2024, de 23 de diciembre (Registro Único de Arrendamientos y Ventanilla Única Digital)
- Sentencia del Tribunal Supremo (Sala Tercera) de 19 de mayo de 2026 — BOE-A-2026-12300
- Sentencia del Tribunal Supremo (Sala Tercera) de 21 de mayo de 2026 (núm. 629/2026) — BOE-A-2026-13893
- Sentencia del Tribunal Supremo (Sala Tercera) de 1 de junio de 2026 — BOE-A-2026-15677
- Reglamento (UE) 2024/1028 (recogida e intercambio de datos de alquileres de corta duración; aplicable desde el 20 de mayo de 2026)
- Ley 49/1960, de Propiedad Horizontal, arts. 7.3 y 17.12
- Ley 29/1994, de Arrendamientos Urbanos, arts. 3.2 y 5 e)
- Ley 35/2006, IRPF, arts. 22–23
- Real Decreto Legislativo 5/2004, IRNR, arts. 24 y 25
- Agencia Tributaria, sede electrónica — no residentes (modelo 210)
- Ley 37/1992, IVA, art. 20.Uno.23.º
- Ley Orgánica 4/2015, art. 25
- Real Decreto 933/2021
- Ministerio del Interior — SES.Hospedajes, preguntas frecuentes
Checked against the text of the rules on 29 September 2026. Change log: 29.09.2026 — article published; legal basis (three Supreme Court rulings, LPH, LAU, IRPF/IRNR/VAT, guest registration) verified in the BOE.
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This guide is general information about Spanish law, not a legal opinion on your case. Rules change and outcomes depend on your own facts and documents — check your situation before you act on it.
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