In April, the Madrid City Council will present the new rule to control housing for tourist use (VUT) in the city.
Although the announcement, made in October by Mayor José Luis Martínez-Almeida, implied that the change was imminent, only now has a date been given.
But the information continues to be delivered in dribs and drabs.
Less than a month before the new project is presented, no clue has been given as to what the changes will be with respect to the Special Plan formulated by former mayor Manuela Carmena, whether the number of inspectors will increase to control the 14,133 apartments. tourism that exist in the capital –according to experimental calculations by the INE–, nor how they will be harmonized with the changes to two laws that the Community of Madrid also projects in its Regulatory Plan 2023-2027.
The only thing that the City Council has justified this week, as it has done repeatedly, is that the Carmena Special Plan was not working.
The opposition has criticized that the Madrid PP has put the law in force since 2019 on tourist apartments on a path to failure by reducing the staff of inspectors.
The Urban Planning delegate, Borja Carabante, justified this Monday in the Urban Planning commission that April will be the time to make the change because Carmena's special plan "establishes that the modification can occur after five years, because it gives a deadline for evaluate the measures.”
However, Más Madrid, which brought the issue to the commission, “is not clear” that a specific period is needed to change the rule and refers to the 2019 text. In article 2 it says that the Special Plan will be in force “in as long as it is not modified by a planning instrument of equal or higher rank.”
In any case, in 2021, the PP and Ciudadanos had already tried to formulate an alternative to the Carmena Special Plan, although, in the end, they gave up.
Carabante has once again attacked the current norm and has described it as “absolutely ineffective” to combat this broad base of illegal VUT.
In Madrid, only 277 VUTs have an operating license, according to data from the Activities Agency obtained by Más Madrid and published this week by ElDiario.es.
The Urban Planning delegate recognizes “that there is a very high number of VUT outside the law”, although it differs from the figures of the Activities Agency.
“There are considerably more [those that have a license], but, in any case, very far from the 13,000 or 14,000 that should be operating,” Carabante said in the session.
The opposition argues that the problem is not the current norm but rather that it has not been applied.
The councilor of Más Madrid Lucía Lois has questioned that five years have been allowed to pass to act.
“Carabante came to confirm what we have been denouncing for years: that the Almeida government has decided to sit back and allow the proliferation of illegal tourist apartments until it manages to modify it as it pleases,” she says.
She also denounces that the City Council has left the current norm without tools to function.
“The problem is not the current regulations that were approved during Manuela Carmena's time, it is that Almeida has dismantled the inspection service,” Lois added.
A year ago the party had already denounced that the inspection staff had been reduced from 22 to 11 professionals, and without exclusive dedication to VUT.
Along the same lines, the socialist spokesperson in the Madrid City Council, María Reyes Maroto, has accused the Consistory of leading Carmena's law to failure: “You criticize the accommodation plan that was approved in 2019, but what fails is its application and, above all, inspections.”
The PSOE manages its own figures of 17 urban inspectors, “a meager number compared to the volume of tourist homes that operate illegally,” highlights Maroto, who has cataloged the capital as “the paradise of illegal tourist apartments.”
However, Carabante assured this Monday that the City Council has “65 people in the inspection.”
Although he has not mentioned that this staff is dedicated to all types of inspections.
There is no official count of tourist homes.
The INE experimental registry speaks of 14,000, but the Airbnb platform catalog totals more than 24,000.
Ayuso will also make changes
Tourists look inside a block of tourist apartments, in an archive image. Gianluca Battista
Not only will the Madrid City Council renew the rules that govern tourist apartments.
The Community of Madrid is also preparing to modify two regulations that will affect VUT.
The decision of the regional Executive comes as a result of the order of the Superior Court of Justice of Madrid (TSJM) and a regulation of the European Union, still in its infancy, with which it is intended to refine the count of tourist apartments, as explained by the director General of Tourism and Hospitality of the Community of Madrid, Luis Fernando Martín, at the February Tourism Commission session.
Consequently, the Government of Isabel Díaz Ayuso will modify decree 79/2014 and law 1/1999 on Tourism Regulation that regulate housing for tourist use (VUT) and detail in which cases there may be sanctions, as part of the Regulatory Plan of the Community of Madrid (2023-2027).
What will be the changes that the Ayuso government promises?
On the one hand, the current decree 79/2014 will include a clause to prohibit VUTs in buildings in which the community of owners decides to veto this type of use, and there will also be no tourist apartments in protected housing.
On the other hand, the Tourism Management Law will be harmonized with the regulation that will come from the European Union, which will require member states to have a “simple and harmonized” system in which owners register their VUT to fight against illegal supply. .
The regulation will oblige the platforms to transmit tourist activity data monthly to the authorities, who in turn must apply controls and sanctions.
With this, the EU hopes to unify the level of demand because, until now, the registration systems and sanctions they manage in each country are different.
This new regulation will imply that the regional tourism law changes so that, now, it is mandatory to present the VUT registration in the registry of tourism companies, which will lead to greater control.
Currently, signing up is voluntary.
The Regional Federation of Neighborhood Associations (FRAVM) asks the Community of Madrid and the City Council for “greater ambition” with the rule changes that are being prepared.
“If the changes will be due to the ruling of the TSJM and the European standard, there is no ambition.
It is incorporating things that already exist or things that you have to do because the law requires you,” says Vicente Pérez, head of Urban Planning at the FRAVM.
He argues that today there are already neighborhood communities in Madrid that, with 60% of votes in favor, as regulated by the Horizontal Property Law, have prohibited SUTs in their buildings.
The FRAVM has asked the Community to include new features in the modifications.
For example, to open a VUT, the host must have authorization from the community of neighbors, something much more demanding than the current standard for horizontal property.
It also asks for control of responsible declarations, an increase in inspection services and for the Community to open a complaints office to assist those affected.
Today, that office is not owned by Sol or Cibeles, but rather by the neighbors themselves, which operates on the basis of volunteers.
The Neighborhood Office, located in the La Corrala association of Lavapiés, has attended to 196 cases.
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