Barcelona decrees that the residential use of apartments shall prevail over temporary use

BarcelonaBarcelona took another step this Friday to try to protect the habitual use of housing. The plenary session definitively approved with the votes of the PSC, Barcelona en Comú, and ERC a modification of the Metropolitan General Plan (PGM) to establish that the habitual and permanent use of housing is the "priority" in the city and that it takes precedence over temporary use. A legal umbrella that will allow the city council to deploy its own regulation in the future to combat seasonal rentals and business models such as cohousing.

The norm allows for the urbanistic distinction of all housing in the city into two types: habitual residential use and everything else —which falls under the concept of "assimilated uses" and includes, for example, seasonal rentals, tourist apartments, economic uses, and second homes. A legal instrument that the City Council wants to use to build its own regulation for seasonal rentals, complementary to the one approved at the end of 2025 by the Parliament.

Thus, while the Catalan law regulating seasonal rentals limits the price that can be charged per room to try to stem the flow from conventional rentals to this modality, Barcelona's regulations —which is already collecting exact data on how much of this type of offer exists in the city— will take a different path. It will define whether this type of offer can be made or not and, if so, will specify how much and where.

The City Council still has, therefore, work ahead. The prioritization in the PGM of the habitual use of housing over other formulas —framed under the concept of "assimilated uses"– is just the first step of the regulation. From here —and once it has the approval of the Generalitat's urban planning subcommittee— it will have to be implemented through a special plan or a specific ordinance that determines when and how this regulation is used. That is, in which specific areas, with what percentage, and with what exceptions.

The first deputy mayor, Laia Bonet, has defended the measure so that Barcelona "needs all the tools to be able to combat speculation and guarantee the right to stay in the city", and has pointed out that the regulations of the Catalan capital are complementary to the regulation approved by the Parliament at the end of 2025. The leader of Barcelona en Comú in the consistory, Gemma Tarafa, has called for speed in the elaboration of the special plan that must materialize the limitation of seasonal rentals and co-housing. "It can be regulated in six months", she said.

Regulating seasonal rentals through a change in the PGM was one of the conditions that Barcelona en Comú had set for Jaume Collboni's government to approve the city's fiscal ordinances for 2025. The focus was then placed on the norm serving to limit seasonal rentals. Now, with the Catalan law already approved –although challenged in the Constitutional Court–, municipal regulations are complementary and allow for intervention in the housing market from another perspective.

While the law emphasizes discouraging seasonal rentals by limiting profit, the modification of the PGM allows for starting from the other end. That is, not focusing on setting a maximum for a specific type of offer, but on establishing an essential minimum of housing for habitual use in each neighborhood. Although the municipal government emphasizes that the objective of the regulation is specifically to combat seasonal rentals and co-housing, this legal umbrella opens up a range of possibilities. It could serve as a basis –also from a fiscal point of view– to combat speculative purchases or the acquisition of apartments by people who do not regularly live there.

Final endorsement from Esquerra

With the approval this Friday of the modification of the MPGM, three months of tug-of-war are left behind, during which the quarrel between Barcelona en Comú and ERC had paralyzed the final debate of this vote. The Republicans voted against the measure in the Urbanism commission in January, annoyed by the Commons' refusal to create a study commission against the speculative purchase of housing that was to be chaired by the leader of Esquerra in the City Council, Elisenda Alamany.

That wound became visible again this Friday in the plenary session. Despite her group's favorable vote, the Esquerra councilor Eva Baró once again reproached the Commons for vetoing the debate on ways to combat speculative purchasing. "Some prioritize the collective interest, and others the partisan one," she defended. She pointed out that, although the regulations raise "legitimate doubts" for them, they have voted favorably "in a political vote and out of trust in social movements".

The rest of the groups voted against the measure, warning that it will not serve to solve the housing problem in the city and that it will further restrict supply. The councilor for Junts per Barcelona Damià Calvet was highly critical of the new regulations, which he considered a "whim" that "transcends the City Council's scope of competence, adds legal uncertainty, and attacks the mixture of uses that the city needs".

Apartments without residents

As ARA explained, the report accompanying the modification proposal of the Metropolitan General Plan justifies the measure by the number of apartments in the city where no residents currently live. In that study, for example, it is concluded that 30% of apartments in the Eixample are not for habitual use. Or, to put it another way, there are no residents who have the city as a stable base and who, consequently, form a community.

To do this, the report cross-references data from the cadastre and the census. The result is that in the overall sum for Barcelona, homes with residents are 81.2%. A figure that drops in the central neighborhoods of the city, where this percentage is notably lower. Examples include the Gothic Quarter (63%); Dreta de l'Eixample (70%); Sant Pere, Santa Caterina i la Ribera (71%); Vila de Gràcia (73%); and l'Antiga Esquerra de l'Eixample (76%).