A court in Seville in southern Spain has ruled that the city council is within its rights to cut off the water supply to illegal tourist apartments.
Over the past year the city has disconnected the supply to six illegal apartments. Three owners appealed but the judge, mindful of neighbours’ complaints about noise, accepted the council’s argument that the apartments were not the owners’ residences.
The council believes there are 5,000 illegal apartments in addition to the 10,000 that have been granted licences. Water supply will be restored once the apartments revert to being normal residences.
Since the end of the coronavirus pandemic, Seville (population 700,000) has been receiving about 3.5 million visitors a year, most of them in the small historic centre.
The council has now ruled that the agencies that manage the apartments will be held responsible, given that the owners often live as far away as the US and are difficult to trace.
Although cities with similar problems with tourist apartments such as Madrid, Barcelona and Valencia say they do not plan to follow Seville’s example, all are under pressure from local people to address a phenomenon that is driving up rents, shrinking the rental property market and forcing residents out.
A huge protest against mass tourism in the Canary Islands in April triggered a series of similar demonstrations in Mallorca, Granada, Málaga and Barcelona.
Faced with angry constituents, even conservative local councils that previously dismissed protests as “tourismphobia” have been forced to take action.
In the Balearic Islands, the ruling conservative People’s party (PP) has been pushed into setting up a cross-party group to rethink the tourism model for the islands, whose 1.2 million residents received nearly 18 million visitors last year.
Valencia, governed jointly by the PP and the far-right Vox party, has introduced a moratorium on new licences for tourist apartments and is planning a crackdown on illegal flats.
In the capital, Madrid, the PP government has done little to curb the rise of tourist flats even though it is estimated that 92% of the 13,502 apartments are illegal. The platform Inside Airbnb, which analyses the tourist apartment market, believes the true number of apartments is closer to 25,000.
Estate agent figures published in April show there were only 8,034 apartments available to rent in Madrid, compared with 14,133 tourist flats.
Jaume Collboni, the Barcelona mayor, announced in June that tourist apartments would be effectively banned as of 2028 when the 10,000 legal flats would not have their licences renewed.
He faces legal challenges from powerful landlords who control much of the market, while housing inspectors, who detect an average of 300 illegal flats a month, are fighting a losing battle.
The socialist-led Catalan government, sworn in earlier this month, says it will make the housing issue a priority.
