The State requires platforms to remove 53,876 illegal tourist apartments.

BarcelonaAs the right and far right are gaining ground in the polls, Pedro Sánchez wanted his first political event of the year, in Malaga, to imbue him with a social discourse that would help him refloat a PSOE party that is going through one of its worst moments. To counter the strain of the Cerdán case, the judicial offensive against his wife, Begoña Gómez, and the Attorney General, Álvaro García Ortiz, and with governability hanging in the balance, the Spanish president wanted to set the agenda with another announcement regarding one of the areas the Spanish government considers a priority. Sánchez announced that the Ministry of Housing and Urban Agenda will require online rental platforms, such as Airbnb and others, to remove the listings for 53,876 tourist apartments for not meeting legal requirements. These are apartments that requested their mandatory registration number on July 1, but do not meet the requirements. These are homes that, according to Sánchez, can therefore be used for rentals to young people and families.

According to the Ministry of Housing, "the different platforms will now have to remove the listings for these properties, which can be marketed on more than one at a time," with the goal of "allowing them to be incorporated into the residential rental market." Spain is the first European country with a single registry for temporary accommodation, which came into effect on January 1st, and since August, the ministry, registrars, and the platforms themselves have shared a digital one-stop shop to put an end to fraud in this type of rental.

By region, Catalonia is the third region where the most tourist accommodation registrations have been revoked, specifically 7,729, according to data from the ministry headed by Isabel Rodríguez. Leading the ranking is Andalusia, with 16,740 cancellations, and the Canary Islands, with 8,698 apartments that do not meet the requirements for tourist use. The Valencian Community is in fourth place, behind Catalonia, with 7,499, followed by Galicia with 2,640, and the Balearic Islands with 2,373. Following the islands is Madrid, with 1,531 revocations.

Within Catalonia, Barcelona is the municipality with the most cancellations, 1,564; it is followed by Lloret de Mar, with 517 apartments that do not meet the requirements, and Salou, with 453. In fact, Barcelona is the municipality in Spain with the third most rejected applications, behind only Seville (2,289) and Marbella (1,802).

According to data from the Ministry, since the registry began operating throughout Spain on January 1, 336,497 applications have been received, of which 264,998 (78.75%) were for tourist accommodation. Of these, 53,786 requests (20.3%) have been revoked, meaning that one in five apartments that attempted to be registered as tourist properties has failed.

Anomaly in Madrid

The ministry highlighted this Sunday the strange case occurring in Madrid. "The great anomaly within the registries is the Community of Madrid, where the percentage is reversed: 83 percent of the apartments that have requested registration have done so as temporary rentals and only 17 percent as tourist rentals." However, of the 3,513 applications for tourist rentals in the community, a third have been revoked for not complying with the law, Isabel Rodríguez's ministry has pointed out.

According to the operation of the registry, an application is rejected when the College of Registrars receives the request and it has incomplete data or data that does not comply with the regulations for tourist rental activities, and these irregularities are not corrected within the established period.

Sánchez attacks the right.

Aside from the housing announcement, Sánchez has boasted about his government's public policies to respond to criticism from the right and has also defended having championed the European response to the genocide in Gaza.has applauded the pro-Palestinian protests at the Vuelta–. "When they go to the media, they say they're hurting for Spain, but they're not hurting for Spain, they're hurting for being in the opposition, which is where they'll be for a while longer," he stated, reiterating that he intends, for now, to finish out his term. The Socialists have chosen Andalusia to kick off the political year because it's one of the regions that will be at stake next year in the regional elections, where María Jesús Montero, as a candidate, aims to unseat the Popular Party's Juanma Moreno from the Andalusian Regional Government. The event was intended to be a message of strength to an electorate that, according to most polls, has lost confidence in him.

This Monday, Sánchez will gather all the deputies, senators, and MEPs in the party's interparliamentary committee to outline the strategic lines for the political year. On the table are the budget for next year and the negotiations with the party's partners. María Jesús Montero, apart from playing her part in Andalusia in 2026, is also the minister responsible for preparing the state accounts. In fact, one of the partners, Esquerra, has targeted her because it believes that dragging its feet when it comes to making progress in fulfilling the singular financing for Catalonia so as not to harm her pre-campaign in Andalusia. Montero did not mention this, but she did defend another of the agreements with ERC: the forgiveness of part of the debt owed to the regional liquidity fund (FLA). The Minister of Finance attacked the PP for putting obstacles in her way and accused it of trying to "set regions against each other," claiming that there is a "grievance" between Catalonia and Andalusia. In this regard, she pointed out that Andalusia is the region that will receive the most debt forgiveness. "The Spanish government has an Andalusian accent."