Free way in Barcelona to regulate seasonal rental

BarcelonaThe ball is back in the court of the Barcelona City Council. On Tuesday, the Barcelona Urban Planning sub-commission –made up of representatives from the Generalitat and the council– gave the green light to the modification of the General Metropolitan 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 now allows the council to deploy its own regulation to combat seasonal rentals and business models such as co-living.

The change modifies articles 276 and 302A of the PGM and was approved by the PSC, Barcelona en Comú and ERC in the municipal plenary session of March. The reform allows for the urbanistic distinction of all housing in the city into two types: that of habitual residential use and all the rest, which is framed under the concept of "assimilated uses" and which includes, for example, seasonal rentals, tourist apartments, economic uses and second homes.

It is a legal instrument that the City Council wants to use to build its own regulation for seasonal rentals, complementary to that 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 flight from conventional rentals towards this modality, the Barcelona regulation will take a different path: it will define whether or not this type of offer can be made and, if so, it will specify how much and where.

With the endorsement of the Generalitat, the City Council now has work ahead of it. The prioritization in the PGM of habitual housing use over other formulas –framed under the concept of "assimilated uses"– is only the first step of the regulation. To implement it, the City Council must develop a special plan or a specific ordinance that determines when and how this regulation is used. That is to say, in which specific zones, with what percentage and with what exceptions.

Municipal sources assure the ARA that they are already working on this regulation, although they do not give details on either the content or the calendar. This Wednesday, the spokesperson for Barcelona en Comú, Gerardo Pisarello, demanded through his profile on X that Barcelona immediately ban seasonal rentals throughout the city. "Now we have the tools to do it. There are no more excuses," he said.

An agreement with the commons

Regulating seasonal rentals through a change in the PGM was one of the conditions that the Commons had set for Jaume Collboni's government in order to approve the 2025 fiscal ordinances. At that time, the focus was placed on the fact that the regulation had to serve to limit seasonal rentals. Now, with the Catalan law approved –although challenged at the Constitutional Court–, the municipal regulation is complementary and allows for influencing the housing market from another point of view.

While the law places the emphasis on dissuading seasonal rentals by limiting their profit, the PGM modification allows starting from the other extreme. That is to say, not focusing on setting a maximum for a specific type of offer, but rather establishing an essential minimum of housing for habitual use in each neighborhood. Although the municipal government stresses that the goal 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 the point of view of taxation– to combat speculative buying or the acquisition of apartments by people who are not going to live there regularly.