Officials in Valencia have signed off on new rules to clamp down on the number of holiday homes across the city.
The latest regulations, announced this week by the City Council of Valencia, stipulate that holiday homes and apartments cannot exceed more than 2% of the total housing stock in each of the city's neighbourhoods and districts.
The move was welcomed by Mayor María José Catalá, who said her city was the first in Spain to impose a limit on holiday accommodations.
“These regulations are one more piece of a much more ambitious strategy, framed within the city's broader vision of changing the paradigm,” she said.
“We are not just a sun and beach city seeking mass low-cost tourism, we are a city that encompasses an urban tourist destination, and we are bringing order to the chaos of recent years.”
Valencia, along with other Spanish cities like Barcelona, have seen large-scale demonstrations in recent years, as protesters recoil overcrowded city centres and strains on the housing market amid rising tourist numbers – otherwise dubbed ‘touristflation’.
The new regulations were approved during a council plenary session as amendments to Valencia’s urban planning standards.
Mayor Catalá said that Valencia is "a residential city, where homes are for the residents", and that the new regulations would ensure that 98% of homes would be built for residential use.
The amendments also state that the total number of tourist accommodations, whether in hotels, apartments, or vacation rentals, can never exceed the equivalent of 8% of the registered residents in each neighbourhood and district of the city, and a maximum of 15% of any type of holiday accommodation will be permitted on ground floors of units within residential areas.
But not everyone is necessarily celebrating, however.
Francisco Guardeño, representative of the Federation of Neighborhood Associations of Valencia, said “more than 9,000 tourist apartments [operate] illegally” in the city.
“The city’s main tourist accommodation sector, almost twice the number of hotel accommodations, operates in the shadows,” Guardeño added. “And this is the problem that the proposal before us does not solve.”
