The Supreme Court sentence num. 620/2026, dated May the 5th, 2026 rules out the Short Term Rental Single Registry and this ruling out means going back to 2024 and the regulations in place on that time for the Touristic Market in Spain. This decision erases the National Government designed scheme that was managed by the Spanish Land Registry. Hence, the Spanish autonomous comunities are back in control of the regulatory power, as it was the situation before the change in the law regulation, and also opens a liability claim scenario from the affected owners vs the National Government, upholds the owners association board (FEVITUR).
The sentence comes to the conclusion that the National Government lacked competence to produce the Single Registry as it was designed for it invaded the regional competences regarding touristic management. The High Court maintains nevertheless the Single Log Window and the mechanisms to share information in place which are mandatory as per the European regulations, thus preserving the administrative cooperation and the mandatory data sending from the digital platforms.
The sentence has immediate consequences for over 100.000 dwellings whose requests for registry were neglected, in many cases for criteria linked to owners community regulations.
Given the National Registry ruling out, the sector associations are fighting to have these neglected dwellings announced again on platforms such as Airbnb o Booking, as long as they hold the corresponding regional licence in place.
In an assessment carried out by FEVITUR, the costs for each affected proprietor (in terms of reservation losses, blockings, additional expenses, etc) adds up to some 33.000€; and the proprietors association board is weighing to launch asset claims that might reach the 160 million euro in total. The board maintains that the government’s model created legal uncertainty and duplicities when overlapped the single registry scheme over activities already regulated by the regional governments.
The Spanish Housing Ministry has urged the regional governments to reinforce the control in place for the touristic rental market after this sentence. On the other hand, regional governments as the Andalusian, are claiming for a joint assessment of the economic, social and territorial impact of the sentence, as well as an analisys of future compensations for those operators affected.
This new scenario brings back the discussion of how to coordinate the touristic activity, the access to dwellings from the Spaniards and the sustainability of the destinations, in a context where regulations are again produced by the regional governments after this mishap of the National Government model.
Source Idealista.
