In its latest move to reclaim housing for residents and curb the effects of mass tourism, the Barcelona City Council has unveiled a subsidy programme designed to encourage residential buildings to formally ban tourist apartments.

Your browser does not support the video tag.

The city has allocated an initial budget of €100,000 to help homeowners’ associations, known as comunitats de propietaris, cover the legal and administrative costs associated with changing their internal statutes to forbid short-term holiday lets. The initiative, managed by the Municipal Institute for Housing and Rehabilitation (IMHAB), aims to empower residents to protect their buildings from the disruption and housing pressure caused by tourist flats.

This measure is part of Mayor Jaume Collboni’s wider, and often aggressive, strategy to tackle Barcelona’s housing crisis. It follows the landmark announcement that the city will not renew any of the roughly 10,000 existing tourist apartment licences, effectively phasing them out completely by the end of 2028. This top-down ban has raised questions about the future of these properties, with many analysts expecting the tourist flats to hit the sales market rather than long-term rentals.

Details of the Subsidy Scheme

The programme is the result of a tripartite agreement between the City Council, the College of Property Administrators of Barcelona-Lleida (Col·legi d’Administradors de Finques), and the Barcelona Urban Property Chamber (Cambra de la Propietat Urbana). Politically, it stems from a budget deal between the mayor’s Socialist party (PSC) and the Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC).

According to reports from La Vanguardia, communities can apply for the aid starting from 27 February. The key details are:

  • A total of €56,000 is allocated for direct grants to homeowners’ associations.
  • The subsidy will cover up to 50% of the management costs, including notary, registry, and professional fees.
  • The maximum grant is €2,500 for creating new statutes or significantly modifying existing ones to include the ban.
  • A smaller grant of up to €1,500 is available for simpler modifications to current statutes.

To be eligible, the community must have formally approved the statute changes from 1 March 2025 onwards. The remaining budget will be used to subsidise the professionals who advise the communities (€36,000) and to fund the partner organisations’ promotional activities (€8,000).

Empowering Residents, Reshaping Neighbourhoods

Jordi Valls, the Deputy Mayor for Economy, Housing, and Tourism, framed the initiative as a tool for community empowerment. “The objective is for homeowners’ associations to equip themselves with regulations and coexistence rules to prohibit the installation of tourist-use housing in their buildings, activities that generate negative effects for the community,” he said in a statement.

Valls added that such measures “contribute to guarding against residential exclusion in Barcelona, as they facilitate a greater number of flats being allocated for residential rent.”

Elisenda Alamany, president of the ERC municipal group, celebrated the launch on social media. “From today, any community of neighbours that wants to prohibit the installation of tourist flats in their building by changing their statutes can do so by receiving financial aid to cover the management expenses, thanks to the City Council subsidy we negotiated,” she wrote.

Criticism and Broader Context

However, the measure has not been universally praised. Gemma Tarafa of the Barcelona en Comú party criticised its limited scope. She argued that since the city’s PEUAT plan already prevents new tourist licences and all existing ones will expire by 2028, the impact will be minimal. Furthermore, she suggested the policy shifts responsibility away from the administration.

“It is the City Council that must inspect and sanction,” Tarafa stated, implying that residents are being asked to do the work of the government. The debate reflects the ongoing tension over how best to regulate the city’s housing market, a topic that has seen numerous legal challenges, including the Catalan PP’s challenge to the regional housing law.

This subsidy scheme is one of several policies aimed at reshaping the property landscape. Mayor Collboni has also floated proposals for a tax hike for non-resident property buyers and has called for a complete ban on non-EU citizens purchasing second homes in the city. By encouraging a bottom-up, building-by-building prohibition on tourist lets, the council is adding another layer to its top-down regulatory efforts, aiming to permanently embed residential use into the legal fabric of Barcelona’s apartment blocks.