Spain’s Canary Islands approves long-awaited legislation to regulate tourist flats

Spain’s Canary Islands on Wednesday approved long-awaited legislation to regulate tourist flats across the archipelago. Along with the Balearics, the Canary Islands have been at the forefront of Spain’s anti-tourism protest movement, with short-term tourist platforms like Airbnb inflating the local property market in recent years.

The ‘Law for the Sustainable Management of Tourist Use of Housing’, better known as the ‘holiday home law’, had been in the pipeline for several years before approval and was promoted by the Regional Ministry of Tourism and Employment headed by Jessica de León. 

The bill is, according to government sources reported in local media Canarias 7, principally “a law that orders and regulates holiday rentals” rather than a total ban.

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Town halls and councils will take on greater powers to control where tourist accommodation can be and put limits on it as a proportion of housing compared to residential buildings.

Land considered residential will be reserved largely for permanent housing, with 80 percent destined for long-term use. The legislation also includes regulations to create limits of 10 percent on tourist accommodation relative to the total housing stock in particularly touristy areas such as La Palma, La Gomera, and El Hierro.

The regional authority was, however, keen to stress that the law is not a total ban on Airbnb and other short-term tourist rental platforms: “This law does not prohibit,” government spokespersons insisted.

“For the first time, the Canary Islands will have a law regulating holiday rentals, after ten years of a decree that lacked clear rules for owners, administrations, town councils, councils and the Canary Islands government itself. Today we are taking an important step, but not the last, there is still a long way to go in the application and development of this law”, said de León.

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“Today we are embarking on a path towards planning, management, organisation and urban discipline, with the understanding that the right to housing, the social function of housing to which 2.2 million Canary Islanders are entitled, must be balanced with an economic activity that is here to stay and which we defend, but with order, moderation and balance in the territory,” de León added.

During the debate and vote, the gallery of the Canary Islands Parliament was filled with senior staff from the Ministry of Tourism and representatives of hotel associations such as Asotel, but also associations of owners opposed to the law, the Canary Islands Vacation Rental Association (Ascav) and various employers’ associations who have raised fears about the economic consequences of the legislation.

After two years of negotiations, drafting and amendments, following the vote de León said that “it has been a difficult law to internalise, also difficult to explain, also difficult to manage within the timeframe of the amendments.”

There are reportedly over 72,000 units registered as holiday homes in the Canary Islands, and it is estimated that with the new regulation the figure could fall to around 9,500. The number of unknown holiday lets is unknown.

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The Canary Islands was one of the hotbeds of Spain’s anti-tourism protest movement in 2024 and several islands, like many major provincial capitals on the Spanish peninsula, have come under strain from a post-pandemic proliferation of tourist flats that locals say has inflated the local rental and property markets.

According to a statement from the Canary Islands government website, in the Canary Islands 44.6 percent of holiday homes are owned by individuals, while 55.3 percent are managed by foreign entities or owners, and not by small local owners.

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