How do you apply for a holiday let licence in Catalonia and which municipalities restrict it?

Question

José Manuel Alburquerque · Accepted Answer

In Catalonia there are two separate authorisations and one does not replace the other. Throughout Catalonia you need the tourist authorisation (“título turístico”), which is obtained by filing a prior notification with the town council, after which the flat is entered in the Catalan Tourism Register (“Registre de Turisme de Catalunya”). In the 262 municipalities covered by Catalan Decree-Law 3/2023, including Barcelona, you also need prior planning permission, which lasts five years and can only be granted if the municipality's planning rules expressly allow tourist use, with a maximum of ten holiday lets per hundred inhabitants. The “Tribunal Constitucional”, Spain's Constitutional Court, upheld this regime in its judgment 64/2025 of 13 March. The tourist authorisation, throughout Catalonia The prior notification is filed with the town council of the municipality where the flat is located, through the “Finestreta Única Empresarial”, the portal of the Generalitat de Catalunya (the Catalan government) for procedures relating to business activities, or through the town council's online portal. The flat must meet, among others, these requirements: Have a valid certificate of habitability (“cédula de habitabilidad”), the document certifying that the home meets the minimum conditions for living in it. It cannot accommodate more people than the certificate allows or more than fifteen. Have an assistance and maintenance service and provide a telephone number for immediate assistance. Give guests the house rules of the owners' association (the “comunidad de propietarios”), at least in Catalan, Spanish, English and French. Display in a visible place the registration number in the Tourism Register, the maximum capacity and the assistance telephone number. Where planning permission is not required, the notification allows the activity to start as soon as it has been filed in full. But it is not an approval. The town council can check the requirements afterwards and render it ineffective if any of them is missing. Planning permission, in 262 municipalities Since 9 November 2023, Decree-Law 3/2023 has also required prior planning permission in municipalities with housing access problems or at risk of the concentration of holiday lets upsetting the balance of their urban environment. They are the 262 listed in its annex, including Barcelona. It is advisable to confirm with the town council that the municipality is still on the list, because the Generalitat reviews it by order every five years. In those municipalities, the licence is subject to these rules: It must be obtained before starting, even if the notification has been filed. It can only be granted if the municipality's planning rules, the plans that set which uses are allowed in each area, expressly allow tourist use. Until they do, there are no new licences. No more licences can be granted than those resulting from a maximum of ten holiday lets per hundred inhabitants. They are allocated through a public procedure run by the town council in which the applications compete. It lasts five years and can be extended for periods of the same length if the planning rules allow it. In Barcelona, the City Council announced in June 2024 that it will not approve those planning rules, so new holiday lets cannot be opened at present. How long those already operating can continue is explained in the question on the end of licences in Barcelona. Outside the 262 municipalities this licence is not required, but each town council's planning rules or municipal ordinances may restrict holiday lets or not allow them in certain areas. What the Constitutional Court said In its judgment 64/2025, the Constitutional Court dismissed the challenge to the decree-law in its entirety. It held that the licence and the limit of ten per hundred inhabitants are necessary and proportionate measures to protect the urban environment and access to housing. In the Court's view, being able to use a home for tourist purposes is not part of the core of the right to property protected by the Constitution, so there is no acquired right to do so forever. Nor did it see any expropriation in requiring flats already operating to obtain the licence or close within five years. What the owners' association may decide is a separate matter, explained in the question on whether the owners' association can ban a holiday let. In the rest of Spain, each autonomous community has its own tourism act, with its own register and requirements.