Tourist Rental Licences in Spain: The Complete Guide

Tourist letting vs. long-term renting

Spain treats these as two different things, and only one needs a licence.

Long-term renting falls under the national Ley de Arrendamientos Urbanos (LAU), a tenant using the property as their main home, usually for a year or more, with strong tenant protections on notice and rent. No tourist licence needed, but it's a regime that strongly favours the tenant.

Tourist letting covers short stays sold to holidaymakers through any channel, Airbnb, Booking, your own website, word of mouth. Most regions cap this at 31 days. Go beyond that and you're in a third category.

Seasonal letting (alquiler de temporada) sits in the middle: roughly one to eleven months, for a specific temporary purpose like a work posting, not tourism and not a permanent home. It doesn't need a licence either, but it isn't a way to run an unlicensed Airbnb under a different name. Courts and regions are increasingly looking hard at "seasonal" listings that turn over every few weeks.

If you're planning short stays to holidaymakers, you need a licence. Full stop.

Licensing is regional, not national

There's no single Spanish tourist rental law. Tourism is a devolved matter, so each of the seventeen regions (plus Ceuta and Melilla) runs its own licence, its own registry, its own rules. What's true in Málaga isn't necessarily true in Alicante, and what's true in either might not be true in the specific building.

This got more complicated, then less complicated, very recently. Late 2024, the government created a national registry, the NRUA, meant to sit on top of the regional ones and give every short-term rental one national code before it could go on any platform. Valencia, Andalucía, Canarias and Murcia challenged it in court, arguing tourism isn't the state's to regulate. On 21 May 2026 the Supreme Court agreed and struck the national registration requirement down (STS 620/2026). The data-sharing infrastructure behind it survives, and platforms still have to hand over data, but the standalone national number is gone. What platforms need now is your regional code, RTA, HUT, VT, VUT, whatever your region calls it, not a separate national one.

That ruling is only months old. Plenty of guidance published earlier in 2026 still describes the national registry as mandatory. It isn't, so please confirm the current position before assuming what number you need.

Region by region

Where Kyero's buyers purchase most, in depth. Every region requires registration before you can advertise, and the registration number has to appear in all advertising.

Andalucía

• Licence: Vivienda con Fines Turísticos (VFT).
• Code: VFT/[province]/[number], e.g. VFT/MA/00000 (Málaga), VFT/CO/00000 (Córdoba).
• Issuing body: Junta de Andalucía, Registro de Turismo de Andalucía (RTA).
• Process: an online declaración responsable, you self-certify and register electronically, no waiting for approval, but inspections happen afterwards and the declaration needs to be accurate.
• Requirements: minimum 14 m² per bed, outside-facing ventilation, hot water, heating and cooling, furnished for immediate use, first aid kit, complaint forms, 24-hour contact number.

Comunitat Valenciana

• Licence: Vivienda de Uso Turístico (VT).
• Code: VT-[number]-[province letter], e.g. VT-45678-A (Alicante), VT-45678-V (Valencia), VT-45678-CS (Castellón).
• Issuing body: Generalitat Valenciana, plus a municipal urban-compatibility report.
• Process: since Decree-Law 9/2024, you now need a town hall report confirming the property's zoning allows tourist letting, a step that didn't exist before. Registration now expires and needs renewing every five years.
• Requirements: technical standards under Annex III of Decree 10/2021, category-dependent. Properties registered before August 2024 have until August 2029 to meet the newer standards; anything registered since must comply immediately.

Región de Murcia

• Licence: Vivienda de Uso Turístico, via a declaración responsable.
• Issuing body: Región de Murcia, Registro de Empresas y Actividades Turísticas.
• Requirements: valid cédula de habitabilidad (or licencia de primera ocupación for new-build), let in its entirety and furnished for immediate use, civil liability insurance of at least €300,000, and a visible sign with prices, registration number and where to find complaint forms.

Balearic Islands

• Licence: Estancia Turística en Vivienda (ETV).
• Issuing body: the relevant island council (Mallorca, Menorca, Eivissa, Formentera), each running its own zoning and its own tourist-place count.
• The most restrictive region in Spain, and worth understanding why. New tourist places have been frozen since February 2022, and Decree-Law 4/2025 went further, permanently banning new places in multi-family buildings across the whole archipelago. You generally can't apply for a brand-new ETV licence anywhere in the islands right now. The only way in is buying an existing "plaza" off another owner, a transfer, not a fresh grant, so total supply doesn't grow. Zoning also varies street by street within each municipality.
• For a buyer: a Balearic property without an existing, transferable ETV licence is a fundamentally different purchase to one with one. Verify the licence is genuinely attached to that property, and current, before it goes anywhere near your rental income projections.

Canary Islands

• Licence: Vivienda Vacacional (VV).
• Issuing body: Registro General Turístico de Canarias, plus, since April 2025, mandatory town hall sign-off confirming the local plan allows tourist use at that address.
• New law, still settling in. Ley 6/2025, passed December 2025, is one of the strictest frameworks in Spain. Existing operators get a transition period, generally five years, up to ten in some cases; new registrations must comply immediately. This is recent enough that implementation detail may still be moving, confirm directly with the Canarias registry.
• Requirements: valid cédula de habitabilidad, technical plan, proof of compliance, civil liability insurance, and community of owners approval if applicable (see section 5).

Catalonia

• Licence: Habitatge d'Ús Turístic (HUT).
• Code: HUT + province letter + number, e.g. HUTB-001896 (Barcelona), HUTG (Girona), HUTT (Tarragona), HUTL (Lleida).
• Issuing body: Registre de Turisme de Catalunya, plus the town hall for the urban licence.
• Barcelona is a special case. No new HUT licences since 2014. The roughly 10,000 existing ones stay valid but won't be renewed once the planning framework expires on 24 November 2028, at which point those properties revert to residential or seasonal use only. A Barcelona property with an active HUT has a hard expiry date to price in; without one already, there's currently no way to get one.
• Beyond Barcelona: Decree 75/2020 and Decree-Law 3/2023 add their own restrictions in 262 of Catalonia's 947 "strained" municipalities, with transitional deadlines also running to November 2028.

Madrid

• Licence: Vivienda de Uso Turístico (VUT), needing two approvals, not one.
• Process: a CIVUT (technical suitability certificate) from the Comunidad de Madrid, and a separate municipal licence from the Ayuntamiento. Both, or it's not legal.
• Independent access: outside the historic centre, a tourist flat in a residential building generally needs its own street-level entrance, no shared stairs or portal with residential neighbours. That alone rules out a lot of ordinary apartment units.
• Tightened again recently: Decree 27/2026 (from 26 April 2026) toughened requirements further, and since 25 March 2026, anything under 25 m² is excluded outright, no exceptions. Inspections have climbed too, 481 in 2024 to 588 in 2025. This is recent enough to double-check current thresholds directly with the Comunidad and Ayuntamiento.

The rest of Spain, briefly

The same pattern applies everywhere else::

• Galicia: VUT, Decree 12/2017, via the Xunta's REAT procedure.
• Asturias: separates "viviendas vacacionales" from "viviendas de uso turístico"; external VUT signage required.
• Cantabria: Ley 5/1999; VUT code; room-by-room letting explicitly allowed here.
• Basque Country: Decree 101/2018 covers whole-property (VT) and room-only (HT) lets separately.
• Aragón: Decree 1/2023.
• Castilla y León: Decree 3/2017; habitability certificate plus minimum room provision.
• Castilla-La Mancha: Decree 36/2018; whole-property only, mandatory AC and heating.
• Extremadura: Law 2/2011 and Law 6/2018; whole-property, prior notice to the tourism authority.
• La Rioja: Decree 10/2017 and Decree 40/2018.
• Navarra: Regional Decree 230/2011.

Please note this is a starting point, not a substitute for checking locally, several of these frameworks have changed within the last two years and can be expected to chnage in the future

Municipal moratoriums and saturation freezes

Regions set the floor; towns and cities regularly go further and freeze new registrations, city-wide or neighbourhood by neighbourhood. Confirmed in force at time of writing:

• Barcelona: no new HUT licences since 2014; existing ones non-renewable from November 2028.
• Málaga capital: suspended all new licences city-wide in August 2025, for up to three years. Previously already blocked in 43 neighbourhoods over 8% tourist-flat density. Already-registered properties can keep operating if compliant, though a change of ownership can affect that in Málaga specifically.
• Sevilla: 10% cap per zone; Casco Antiguo and Triana closed to new registrations.
• San Sebastián: municipal moratorium on top of Basque regional rules.
• Bilbao and the Barcelona metro-area municipalities: local moratoriums confirmed.
• Balearic Islands: effectively archipelago-wide (see section 3), a regional freeze rather than one city, but worth repeating as the most binding restriction on this list.

The community of owners can block a licence regardless of anything else

Even where region and town hall allow tourist letting, the building's own community of owners can stop it. Article 17.12 of the Ley de Propiedad Horizontal lets a qualified majority, three-fifths of owners representing three-fifths of the participation quotas, vote to authorise, limit, condition or prohibit tourist letting. Where it's allowed, that same majority can add a surcharge (up to 20% has been cited) to the community fees of units used for tourist letting.

The bigger shift is the default itself, not just the threshold. Before a reform that took effect on 3 April 2025, tourist letting was allowed unless the community voted against it. Since then, for any property getting its licence after that date, it's the reverse: you need the community's prior, express approval before you can start at all. Not retroactive, anything already legally operating before 3 April 2025 carries on under the old rules. This is recent enough to want independent legal confirmation for a specific building rather than relying on this summary.

A genuine deal-breaker to check before offering, not after. A property can pass every regional and municipal check and still be unlettable if its community has voted against tourist letting, or, for a newer purchase, simply hasn't voted in favour yet. Ask to see the community minutes on this specific point before assuming a licence is achievable.

Habitability documentation

Every region needs proof the property is legally habitable before it'll register it, and which document depends on the property's age:

• Licencia de primera ocupación: issued once, for new-build or major renovation, confirming the building was constructed to the approved project and meets habitability, safety and health standards.
• Cédula de habitabilidad: the equivalent for older, already-occupied housing. More common in Catalonia, the Balearics and the Comunitat Valenciana; Madrid and some others use the licencia de primera ocupación even for older stock.
• Certificado de antigüedad: for genuinely old properties where neither exists, common in rural and old-town properties, a certificate establishing the building's age. Sometimes an alternative route, but acceptance varies by town hall, don't assume it without checking.

Check this before offering, not at completion. No document, no registration, no matter how well the property otherwise meets the technical standard. It can also block a mortgage and block connecting utilities in your name. Raise it with the agent before you offer.

Minimum standards a licensed property has to meet

• Heating and cooling in most regions (Comunitat Valenciana is a partial exception, standard-category apartments there don't need AC, higher categories do).
• Furnished and equipped for immediate use, kitchen, hot water.
• First aid kit.
• Official complaint forms available, with a visible sign showing where.
• Guest information: house rules, facilities, waste disposal, noise rules, local transport and services.
• A 24-hour contact number.
• Registration number and, in most regions, identifying signage on the property.

Registering guests: SES.HOSPEDAJES

Separate from the tourist licence itself. Anyone letting short-term accommodation, licensed or not, has to report guest ID details to the Ministry of Interior via SES.HOSPEDAJES, mandatory since 2 December 2024 under Real Decreto 933/2021. Guest data within 24 hours of check-in, used by the Policía Nacional and Guardia Civil. This runs alongside your regional tourist registration, not instead of it.

Enforcement and penalties

For years, operating without a licence was common. Plenty of owners did it and were never bothered, town halls simply didn't have the visibility to catch most of it. That's changed, and it's worth being direct about why: platforms are now the enforcement mechanism, not an afterthought to it. The data-transmission obligations that survived the NRUA's annulment exist precisely so authorities can cross-reference what's listed on Airbnb or Booking against what's actually registered. It's the same pattern other countries have gone through, once a government can see every listing on a platform, matching it against a licence register is straightforward, and Spain is now doing exactly that.

The scale of it is real. Spain's consumer affairs ministry fined Airbnb €64 million in 2026 for advertising unlicensed properties, and separately ordered it to pull over 65,000 listings it judged illegal. Platforms now have to remove a flagged listing within 48 hours of formal notice.

Fines themselves are tiered, minor, serious, very serious, with very serious (unlicensed letting itself) running roughly €100,000 to €600,000 at the top end in the strictest regions like Catalonia. Madrid's scale is generally lower, more like €3,000-€30,000 for typical breaches. Other regional figures vary.

None of this is a reason to avoid tourist letting. It's a reason to register properly and keep the paperwork current, since the days of quietly not bothering are genuinely over.

Before you make an offer for a property you will rent

Ask the agent or owner:

• Is there an active licence, and can you verify the registration number yourself against the regional registry, not just take their word for it?
• If not, is the town hall currently accepting new registrations, or is it under a moratorium?
• Has the community of owners ever voted on tourist letting, either way? Can you see the minutes?
• Does the property have the right habitability document for its age and region?

Ask a local, independent lawyer or gestor, not the seller's agent:

• Does this specific address sit inside a zone where tourist letting is currently permitted? This can vary block by block.
• Is an existing licence genuinely attached to this property and transferable, or personal to the current owner? Rules vary by region, and in the Balearics this determines whether the property has any tourist-letting value at all.
• What would need to change, access, size, equipment, to bring it up to current standard if it isn't already licensed?

Build into your numbers, not just your paperwork:

• Any transition-period works a region requires, even for already-licensed properties.
• A realistic view of licence security, a region like Barcelona or the Balearics where rules are tightening, versus one with more stable ongoing registration.

Failing any of these checks doesn't make it a bad buy. It makes it a different buy to one with a clean, current, transferable licence, and the price should reflect that.

Everything above can change, and parts of it already have more than once in the two years before this was written. Use it as a map of what to check and who to ask, not a substitute for checking directly at the time you're buying.