Renting out your Spanish property: tourist licence and tax rules by region (2026)

First, the regional registration. Each autonomous community runs its own tourist-accommodation register with its own acronym — HUT in Catalonia, ETV in the Balearics, VFT in Andalucía, VT in the Valencian Community, VV in the Canaries, VUT in Madrid. The registration is attached to the property, carries minimum standards (air conditioning, heating, first-aid kit, complaint forms, guest registration with the police), and can be refused where the town hall has capped density.

Second, the national registry number. Spain's Single Registry for short-term rentals became operative in 2025, and booking platforms are required to display a valid number on each listing and to remove listings without one. The number does not replace the regional licence — it is issued on the back of it, and mismatched or missing data is the most common reason a listing is pulled.

A third gate sits below both: the community of owners. Spanish horizontal property law lets a community prohibit tourist letting by qualified majority, and many coastal and city blocks have already voted to do so. Read the statutes and the last two years of minutes before exchanging.

Barcelona city council has set out the end of its tourist-apartment regime: the roughly ten thousand existing HUT licences in the city are due to lapse by November 2028, after which those apartments are expected to return to residential use. New licences are not being issued. For buyers, that means a Barcelona apartment should be underwritten today on long-let or own-use economics, not on nightly rates — and lenders in the city are already taking that view. The policy has been challenged, so the end date could move, but the direction is settled enough that it should not be the basis of a purchase plan.

Mallorca, Menorca, Ibiza and Formentera operate a fixed pool of tourist-let places, allocated by zone and by property type, with long-standing moratoria on new grants. In practice a licence is acquired with a property or bought on the secondary market, and the price of places is a material line in the acquisition budget. Palma prohibits tourist letting in flats altogether. Because the licence is a tradeable asset, valuers and lenders will want to see it evidenced and transferable before they attribute any value to it.

Andalucía registers holiday homes with the Junta's tourism registry (VFT) and applies minimum standards; since the 2024 reform, municipalities may set density limits and communities of owners may bar tourist use. Málaga has suspended new registrations in a long list of districts.

The Valencian Community requires a municipal certificate of urban compatibility before registration, restricts letting to certain floors and entrances in some municipalities, and now renews registrations on a five-year cycle. Valencia city and parts of Alicante have paused new registrations.

The Canaries have moved to restrict holiday letting in residential zones, with a framework that protects existing use but makes new residential-zone registrations difficult; purpose-built tourist complexes are treated differently and may carry an obligation to let through the complex operator.

Rental income from Spanish property is taxed in Spain under the non-resident income tax (IRNR), filed on Modelo 210. Residents of the EU, Iceland, Norway and Liechtenstein pay 19% on net income, deducting mortgage interest, IBI, community fees, insurance, utilities, management, repairs and depreciation for the days let. Everyone else — including UK, US, Swiss and UAE-resident owners — pays 24% on gross rent with no deductions. Since the 2024 tax year the rental return is filed annually, between 1 and 20 January, rather than quarterly. Model the numbers for your property with the Spanish holiday-let profit and tax calculator.

For the days the property is not let, imputed income still applies at 1.1% or 2% of the cadastral value — see the Modelo 210 guide for the calculation. Regional tourist taxes are charged to the guest but collected by the host in the Balearics and Catalonia. Purely residential letting without hotel services is exempt from Spanish VAT; adding hotel-style services (daily cleaning, reception, linen changes during the stay) can bring the letting into VAT at 10% and change the tax analysis entirely.

Worked example: a Costa del Sol apartment let for €30,000 gross in a year, with €9,000 of allowable costs. An Irish-resident owner pays 19% of €21,000, roughly €3,990. A UK-resident owner pays 24% of €30,000, roughly €7,200 — before any credit claimed at home under the double tax treaty. The cost of the passport, not the property, is what moves the number.

Spanish lenders assess a holiday-let purchase on your personal income, not on projected nightly rates, and every buyer profile drops a level on advance: indicatively 60–70% loan-to-value for EU and resident buyers, around 60% for UK and Swiss buyers, and 50–60% for US, UAE and corporate buyers. A licence that transfers with the property widens the panel materially.

Where a licence application is pending and the vendor will not wait, the usual structure is short-term finance to complete followed by a term mortgage once the licence is granted. See holiday-let mortgages and tourist licences for the lending detail, and bridging finance in Spain for the interim route.