Barcelona Is Shutting Down Every Airbnb by 2028
As Barcelona takes radical action to try and protect affordable housing, we ask what is preventing this from happening here, amid Scotland’s housing crisis? From Alan Warren in Faterrela, Cataluna.
Barcelona Is Shutting Down Every Airbnb by 2028. Here’s What’s Actually Happening.
The boldest tourist rental crackdown in Europe is already underway
In June 2024, Barcelona’s mayor announced something that instantly shook the tourism and property world:
By November 2028, all 10,101 tourist apartment licences in the city will expire.
None will be renewed.
In practical terms, Barcelona is ending legal short-term tourist apartments in residential buildings.
And yes, that includes Airbnb-style rentals.
The goal, according to Mayor Jaume Collboni, is simple:
Return housing back to residents.
First: Barcelona is not banning tourists.
This part gets misunderstood constantly.
Barcelona is not banning Airbnb as a website. Hotels, hostels, guesthouses, and legal accommodation businesses will continue operating normally.
Tourists are still welcome.
What the city is eliminating is the category of whole-apartment tourist rentals for stays under 31 days inside residential buildings.
That distinction matters.
Under Catalan law:
- 31 nights or fewer = tourist rental
- 32 nights or more = residential or seasonal rental
So after 2028, people will still be able to rent apartments in Barcelona.
They will just need to stay longer.
The classic “three nights in an Eixample Airbnb” era is ending.
Why Barcelona is doing this
The short answer:
Housing.
Over the past decade, rents in Barcelona have risen dramatically while thousands of apartments shifted from residential housing into tourist accommodation.
Locals increasingly felt pushed out of their own neighbourhoods.
Areas like Gràcia, Eixample, and Ciutat Vella changed rapidly as tourism expanded. Residents complained that traditional shops disappeared, long-term rentals vanished, and communities slowly hollowed out.
Barcelona tried softer measures first.
It stopped issuing many new tourist licences years ago. It fined illegal rentals. It capped numbers.
None of it slowed the pressure enough.
So the city decided to go nuclear.
Airbnb fought it. Spain’s courts backed the city.
Property groups and tourism organisations immediately challenged the plan.
Airbnb argued the city was unfairly targeting short-term rentals and claimed hotels would benefit most from the crackdown.
But in 2025, Spain’s Constitutional Court upheld Barcelona’s plan.
That ruling was huge.
It confirmed the city has the legal authority to phase out tourist apartment licences completely.
So at this point, this is no longer a proposal.
It is happening.
This is bigger than Barcelona.
Barcelona may be the headline, but Spain as a whole has been tightening rules around tourist rentals. The Spanish government has already fined Airbnb €65 million for listings without valid licences
Since 2025, all short-term rentals in Spain also require a national registration number before being advertised online.
Meanwhile, places like Málaga, Palma, and the Canary Islands have introduced their own restrictions as housing pressures intensify.Barcelona is simply the most aggressive version so far.
Will this actually fix housing?
That is the billion-euro question.
Supporters believe returning 10,000 apartments to the long-term market could ease rental pressure and help residents stay in the city.
Critics argue the housing shortage is much larger than Airbnb alone and say hotels will simply absorb more tourists while locals see little improvement.
Well, both sides have a point.
Barcelona’s housing crisis is real.
But whether removing short-term rentals alone meaningfully lowers rents is something economists are still debating.
What this means for visitors after 2028
If you are visiting Barcelona for a short trip after 2028, expect hotels to become the default option again.
Short-term apartment supply will shrink significantly.
Prices for legal tourist accommodation may rise as supply tightens.
Longer stays, however, will still be possible through mid-term rentals of 32+ nights.
So digital nomads, slow travellers, and people scouting a move to Spain will still have options.
The casual weekend Airbnb city-break crowd? Much less so.
The bigger picture
What Barcelona has done is create a blueprint every major tourism-heavy city in Europe is now watching closely.
Amsterdam. Edinburgh. Lisbon. Florence. Athens. New York.
All are wrestling with the same question:
How do you balance tourism with a city people can still afford to live in?
Barcelona just gave the boldest answer yet.
Whether it works will probably shape housing policy across Europe for the next decade.
Sources:
Idealista — Barcelona Sets 2028 Deadline to Phase Out Tourist Flats June 2025
Euro Weekly News — Barcelona Declares War on Airbnb October 2025
Euronews — Spain Fines Airbnb c5 Million December 2025
Rio Times — Barcelona’s 2028 Airbnb-Style Tourist Apartment Ban Tests Europe’s Urban Tourism Model October 2025
Spain Buddy — Is Barcelona Banning Airbnb May 2026
Timeout — Why Is Barcelona Banning Holiday Apartments June 2024
Spain seems to be kicking ass at the moment on a number of issues, credit to them.
The airb’n’b thing might be more prescient than they think. The level of demand destruction about to be caused by a 20% cut in the world’s oil supply should wipe out large scale international tourism anyway, so making those flats and villas available to the local population makes a lot of sense.
Demand destruction is a peculiar phrase used by economists, what they mean is discretionary spending will decline as prices of essentials are driven higher by reduced resource availability. Reduced discretionary spending means less money left over for luxuries such as holidays abroad, TV subscriptions and so on. As for the hotels, well, the Spanish government can buy them at a dime a dollar and use them for climate refugees, which they are about to get a lot more of, along with the rest of Europe.
Aye, welcome news, but Spain is much more decentralised than the UK is, and that includes rotten, corrupt SNP Scotland…
We dont have a strong municipal system of government there is no mayor of Edinburgh – much less a radical campaingner from the “Stop Evictions!” movement like Ada Colau was – we have a deeply undemocratic, ultra capitalist system of exploitation dressed up in the language of neoliberalism and free markets…
What I mean is that it’s a fine idea, but one unlikely to catch on in Scotland…
The Gaels of the isles in particular have been raising this for over a decade, but the SNP, as ever, refuse to take, robust meaningful action and meekly bow down to the myth of the capitalist free market knowing best, which clearly is not the case, if it were the case, there would be no housing crisis…
Of course, a good many will be second home owners…
Our young people are leaving university saddled with massive debt, unable to secure a home to start a lufe, threatened by resource guggling AI which the dystopian UK govt just approved for the courts – Minority Report territory – and our “government of national independence” has literally nothing to say about any if these things…
Young people in Scotland are being betrayed like no other generation I can think of, it’s astonishing…
Still no Left Party of any substance in Scotland either..
If you want to actually win independence, then you need to win over young people, you have to come up with a meaningful and attractive plan for people aged 18-35, which would include really, really basic rights, rights which were won in 1945 and have been allowed to lapse, like the right to a home, the right to meaningful work, the right to not be crippled with debt for daring to broaden your mind by choosing further education instead of a job at 18…
Where is the SNP plan for young people?
The SNP better watch out, otherwise we’ll all end up voting for Colin Fox and the SSP who stands, every weekend at the east end of Princes St with his flags and his megaphone like he’d missed the fact that kind of militancy ended decades ago…
So, we have a mental health crisis, we have young people driven to distraction and worse by the social media, and yet we have a shortfall of mental health resources… and 25% of the country identify as having a disability!!! What???
In a rational world, this would be easy to solve. Train more health professionals. Put in more resources, design a mental health resillience strategy and awareness campaign – a walk in the country now and again works wonders – so people dont blithely make themselves half crazy…
“Above all, connect!!! “As E.M Foster said…
Why dont they do this? Well, it doesnt show up in the GDP figures in a meaningful way, that spend, and it costs money.
But a pensioner, let’s say for the sake of argument, a grousy old retired Scottish academic, with a pension pot worth 100K in stocks and shares, if that rises to 120K, with him pottering about in the garden, then that 20K DOES show up in GDP…the Scottish academic, poisoned by inter departamental disputes, is a net contributer to GDP growth, whereas the 20 year old with the blues in his room- quite rightly in most cases – is a drag on resources, a burden for the tax payer…
Thomas Piketty recently argued against diversity policies on the grounds that they create resentment and create credibility problems for the beneficieries.
He argued the money would be better spent on the fight against racism, sexism, homophobia etc… he’s probably right..
Piketty is right about the misguided and well intentioned diversity paradigm installed in the UK, and only the UK in Europe, in 1991… it doesnt exist in Spain, or anywhere else in Europe… US Import Only…
It’s created a culture based on identity and divisin , not common interest and soludarity..
25% of Scots, as per The National, identify as having a disability. That is nuts!!!
And Big Pharma and mental health?
It’s just crazy, mad, thousands of young people who need a meaningful future and the prospect of, are being told by Big Pharma they have chemical imbalances…
You”ve got this, you have that…
When the British colonized China, they induced them witjh opium… it’s not so different with Big Pharma in late capitalist Britain…
och, jist ban the tourists, they are a pain in the hole by & large