Spain’s new national registry for short-term rentals, introduced on 1 July to improve control over seasonal and tourist lets, is off to a rocky start.
According to an article by property portal Idealista, lawyers and property professionals claim the system lacks clarity, consistency, and sufficient infrastructure—raising questions about whether this regulation may be doing more harm than good in its early rollout.
Fragmented criteria, identical paperwork
All property owners marketing short-term or seasonal rentals on digital platforms are now required to obtain a unique registration code via the recently created “One-Stop Shop” register. While the stated aim of the regulation is to bring greater transparency to a precarious rental landscape, legal professionals argue that its implementation has introduced unnecessary confusion.
“There’s no uniform protocol, and we’re seeing uneven decisions across regions,” Joaquín Gómez-Villares, a property law specialist and partner at the firm Montero Aramburu & Gómez-Villares Atencia, told Idealista. “We’ve had cases where one office accepts the application and another rejects it, despite being submitted with identical documentation.”
According to Gómez-Villares, this inconsistency prevents registrars from making confident rulings and leaves owners in a legal grey zone. “The idea is commendable, but give us a homogeneous system,” he said.
Spain’s new rental registry rules are causing confusion—Do you need to register?
Rushed timelines, strained systems
Adding to the sector’s frustration is the speed with which the registry was launched. Although its European Union equivalent (Regulation EU 2024/1028) sets out a compliance timeline beginning in 2026, Spain opted to fast-track its adoption—becoming the first EU nation to bring it into effect. The result? A bottleneck.
“There simply hasn’t been enough time or infrastructure to manage the volume of applications,” says Gómez-Villares, who describes the rollout as a bureaucratic bottleneck. His firm, which operates primarily in Andalusia, has seen clients scrambling to meet deadlines amid an administrative crush.
This may be one reason several Spanish regions—including Andalusia, Valencia, Murcia, and the Canary Islands—have challenged the national register’s legality. One of their key objections is the duplication of bureaucratic effort: most short-term lets already have local tourist licences.
“This new measure just layers additional complexity on top of existing structures,” says Gómez-Villares. “The red tape is overwhelming.”
No clarity on consequences
Another major gap in the new system is the absence of a sanctions regime. While owners are expected to comply, it remains unclear what will happen if they don’t.
“This was supposed to be a tool for transparency, but it’s created legal insecurity,” says Gómez-Villares. “The law doesn’t specify what happens to platforms or owners if they operate beyond the rules.”
What about owners who have already accepted bookings prior to the regulation? What obligations do platforms have? The silence is deafening. “There’s no roadmap and no enforcement structure,” he adds. “You cannot issue regulations without knowing what they’re going to mean in practical terms.”
According to Gómez-Villares, a modification of the Royal Decree is urgently needed, particularly to clarify procedures and penalties.
The wrong blame game?
Gómez-Villares also questions the underlying premise that short-term rentals are largely to blame for the housing shortage. “Tourist apartments make up less than 4% of the national housing stock—they are not the root of the housing problem,” he argues.
He also points out that key stakeholders—including industry associations and regional governments—were not sufficiently consulted during the design of the system. “If they had involved the sector earlier, this regulation would have turned out very differently,” he says.
Looking ahead, Gómez-Villares suggests postponing mandatory compliance until 2026. “The spirit of the regulation is good, but for it to work, we need legal certainty, clear criteria, and enough time to get this right,” he concludes.
For now, one thing seems clear: while the register promises more transparency, its chaotic rollout has delivered more legal haze than clarity.
