Apartur says the problem isn't the accommodations, but the rooms: "There are 3,000 illegal immigrants in Barcelona."

BarcelonaAfter Pedro Sánchez announced yesterday that The Spanish government will require platforms to remove 53,876 illegal tourist apartments.The sector hasn't taken even 24 hours to react. And it has done so by defending the idea that the problem with illegal tourist accommodation isn't the apartments, but the rooms.

"Sánchez has confused the revocation of licenses with the legality of tourist apartments. All the tourist apartments that have been presented in the registry are legal, and they have simply revoked a complicated procedure," explained Marian Muro, the general director of the employers' association, at a press conference.

On the one hand, Apartur has sought to differentiate between illegal tourist apartments, which are those that do not have a tourist license—in Barcelona there are 10,000 licensed tourist apartments—and apartments that are not on the mandatory registry that the Spanish government launched on January 1. Starting this summer, all those that have a license but are not registered will not be able to advertise on platforms. This is what Sánchez announced on Sunday.

According to employers' calculations, 6,173 of the 10,000 legal tourist accommodations are registered in Barcelona, while 925 are in the process of being processed and, as Pedro Sánchez announced yesterday, 1,564 have had their registration requests revoked.

Muro also corrected Sánchez on the impact of this withdrawal of advertisements. "They say that by revoking tourist rental licenses, they will gain long-stay housing. And that's not the case," Muro said. The employers' argument is that the fact that they cannot advertise on platforms because they do not have a registration number does not mean they will move to the traditional market: "In an internal survey, only 5 percent of owners said they would use the property for long-stay rentals," he added.

The rooms, the real problem

Furthermore, Apartur has focused on the illegal rental of rooms in Barcelona, ​​​​where, according to the employers' association, "there are at least 3,000 illegal ones," while there are only about 500 entire illegal tourist apartments, which correspond to the activity of gangs and mafias.

The Barcelona tourist apartment association also announced this Monday the launch of the Apartur Denuncia platform to help combat illegal tourist accommodation, whether entire apartments or just rooms.

In fact, Apartur has attacked Barcelona City Council, claiming that they are not aware of any effort by the council to inspect and detect illegal rooms. "Perhaps it would be good to ask them why these thousands of illegal rooms aren't being closed," said its president, Enrique Alcántara.