The decree-law on housing, which the Spanish Cabinet approved on 6 October, is already yielding visible results. The Ministry of Social Rights, Consumer Affairs ... and the 2030 Agenda has urged two platforms that advertise tourist accommodation, without specifying which ones, to remove 8,318 listings for tourist accommodation offered as seasonal rentals.
The reason is that the listings are reportedly in breach of the urban tenancies act, which the housing decree amended at the start of the month.
The ministry has identified as unlawful those advertisements offering seasonal accommodation while allowing bookings of under 31 days, which is the minimum duration for this type of contract as established by law following the recent amendment. Consequently, the ministry considers that this could constitute an unfair commercial practice on the grounds that it is misleading.
The majority of the infringements (81 per cent) concern properties in the region of Madrid: 6,772 out of a total of 8,318, of which 6,523 are in the capital.
"In the first week of October, Cabinet once again approved a specific regulation to prevent such practices, namely the aforementioned royal decree-law 29/2026, which, among other regulations, limits the availability of short-term rentals to 31 days," the Ministry of Consumer Affairs stated in a press release on Friday.
The government has requested that both platforms remove these adverts and warned that, should the platforms fail to remove or block access to them, they could face the opening of an investigation by the department of consumer affairs.
Earlier cases
The Ministry of Consumer Affairs has previously taken several other steps to put an end to unlawful practices that "are contributing to the housing crisis in Spain". The government has already fined Airbnb 64 million euros for offering thousands of holiday accommodation listings that breach the regulations, leading to the removal of more than 65,000 listings from the site.
Another well-known platform, Booking, also removed more than 4,000 listings that do not comply with the law following an official request from the Ministry of Consumer Affairs.