Vacation rentals platform Airbnb, which hosts a significant number of Barcelona listings, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Photograph: Roi Shomer/iStockBarcelona, a top Spanish holiday destination, announced on Friday that it will bar apartment rentals to tourists by 2028 as it seeks to rein in soaring housing costs and make the city liveable for residents.
“We are confronting what we believe is Barcelona’s largest problem,” Collboni told a city government event.most visited city by foreign tourists, means some residents cannot afford an apartment after rents rose 68 per cent in the past 10 years and the cost of buying a house rose by 38 per cent, Collboni said. Access to housing has become a driver of inequality, particularly for young people, he added.
Local governments have announced restrictions on short-term rentals in places such as Spain's Canary Islands, Lisbon and Berlin in the past decade. Hotels stand to benefit from the move. The opening of new hotels in the city’s most popular areas was banned by a far-left party governing Barcelona between 2015-2023, but Collboni has signalled he could relax the restriction.“Those 10,000 apartments will be used by the city's residents or will go on the market for rent or sale,” Collboni said of the measure.