For tourists to Barcelona who want to avoid being duped by fake listings on holiday apartment websites and social media accounts, or who simply wish to be more ethical visitors, the city council has created a website providing checks on whether a rental is legal.
To avoid arriving and discovering the rental is one of the 2,000 apartments the city has closed down in the past year because they were operating without a licence, go to fairtourism.barcelona and enter the address. The site will indicate whether the apartment is licensed or not. There are 9,600 licensed tourist apartments in the city.
As no new licences have been issued since 2014, illegal apartments have proliferated. However, the city doubled the number of inspectors and introduced a scheme whereby residents can denounce landlords who let unlicensed flats.
After a long battle with Airbnb, which included imposing a €600,000 fine that the company has yet to pay, the platform has finally agreed to remove unlicensed properties from its site. However, there are many other sites that advertise illegal apartments.
The boom in holiday lets has led to sharp rent increases as landlords can earn five times as much renting to tourists rather than residents. As a result, residents are being driven out and the central areas of the city are becoming depopulated. On any one night, for example, fewer than half the people sleeping in the old part of Barcelona are residents.
On the website, the city calls on visitors to help stamp out illegal accommodation that “creates speculation and illicit economies” that bring nothing positive to residents.
“If you are visiting Barcelona, we need your commitment and cooperation to prevent the proliferation of this illicit economy in our city and the irresponsible, economically unsustainable and environmentally unfriendly tourism it encourages,” the site says.
